Women’s Achievement Awards

Women’s Achievement Awards (WAA)

Sponsored by the UWM WGS Department and WRC 

Recognize and honor the work and achievements of students whose work might go underrepresented due to dominant ideas of achievement. The awards will be given under the categories of activism and community engagement, caregiving responsibilities, and people of color & multi-marginalized students. This award has no GPA requirement and can be awarded to any student– undergraduates, graduate students, part-time, non-degree, and all other student designation. 

Women’s Achievement Awards Recipients 2021

Activism and community work / engagement / service 

  • Emma Havorth
  • Melissa Hernandez
  • Jacquie Parmely
  • Haley Joyce
  • Elsie Osweiler
  • Matida Bojang

Caregiving responsibilities and duties:

  • Jacquie Parmley
  • Tyleena Harrington
  • Shayla Rubbani
  • Nala Paulsen
  • Jess Derosier
People of color and multiply marginalized students:
  • Matida Bojang
  • Kintressa (Tressa) Gosz
  • Shayla Rubbani
  • Tyleena Harrington
  • Jess Derosier

Women’s Achievement Award Rubric

In an effort to recognize and highlight the accomplished work of many students who are multiply marginalized, and therefore, directly or indirectly, cannot attain or access typical higher education recognition, the Women’s Resource Center and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies offer this rubric for the Womens Achievement Award in 2021. 

The award is open to all students, including undergraduates, graduate students, part-time, non-degree, and all other student designations. 

The award is not GPA based. In the application materials, GPA should not be mentioned, and if it is, the award committee members cannot, in any way, give weight to high GPAs and/or documented academic successes. 

Three categories are given additional consideration: 

1) Activism and community work / engagement / service: this category honors labor done to benefit communities, social justice causes related to structures of oppression, and the interrelated value of activism and community work while a student navigating higher education. This can be thought of as the “for others” or “above and beyond” or “in community with” category. 

2) Caregiving responsibilities and duties: this category honors familial and kinship labor done while a student navigating higher education. Such labor is rarely recognized, requires highly developed time management skills and work-life balance, and is often assumed not to be a factor in the lives of students at any level in higher education. As such, this labor is crucial to recognize, highlight, make visible, and to uplift those who undertake studies while taking care of others (including, but not limited to: children, parents, partners, kin – fictive or through blood/marriage bonds). 

3) People of color and multiply marginalized students: this category honors the difficulties students, at all levels and of all types, face as people of color or multiply marginalized students. While is it always hard work to attain a degree or complete a program, it is that much harder when you do not have a mentor, teacher, or advisor who comes from a similar background, does not look like you, cannot speak to the specifics of a similar lived experience. In the doing of course work, all students will bump up against barriers; however, students of color and multiply marginalized students will assuredly face structural and discriminatory barriers frequently. This category honors the fortitude that these students must develop to claim their education in addition to the standard work of interacting with an institution of higher education.