This past week ETSU showed its appreciation for its faculty and staff by giving them discounts and awards. Faculty and Staff Appreciation week was sponsored by SGA and Sodexo.

Every Spring SGA organizes the “Student Choice Awards;” as the name suggests these are awards given to the faculty and staff based off the input of ETSU’s students.

Every ETSU faculty and staff member was eligible and students wrote in the candidates they felt best matched a certain category in an online survey.

There were five categories of awards given; most creative, best storyteller, most school-spirited, best campus resource, and most inspiring.

SGA President, Keyana Miller, explains that the plan was to originally assign the award to the person with the most votes.

“There was never one winner; it was pretty even throughout,” Miller said.

Because there was no clear winner, SGA decided to expand the number of winners by handing out the awards to at least the top eight candidates in each category.

“We opened it up to become more inclusive,” said Miller.

Doing such meant that a total of over 40 faculty and staff members received an award. The awards were personally delivered to each recipient by members of SGA.

“Different senators and our Chief of Staff, Destiny Saunders-Simon, physically went to hand out the awards,” Miller said.

In addition to faculty and staff receiving awards, a whole department also received an award; the Department of Ground and Landscape received the award for most inspiring department.

By handing out these awards, SGA achieved its goal of ensuring that the faculty and staff knows that ETSU students care and appreciate all the hard work they put in to making ETSU run smoothly.

For more information about upcoming Student Government Association events you can visit their website at https://www.etsu.edu/sga/ and maybe get involved with this organization next semester!