Chris Bove with President Parlange after winning Rainville award in Student Leadership. Photo Courtesy of: Michael Nolfe
The University of Rhode Island held the 35th annual A. Robert Rainville Leadership Awards ceremony on April 11, honoring student leaders in the categories of employee excellence, team excellence, servant leadership and student leadership.
The ceremony, which was named after the former Vice President for Student Affairs A. Robert Rainville, who served from 1980-1986, was held in the Memorial Union Ballroom. The event was invite-only, with only nominees, finalists and guests allowed to attend.
Nominations for the awards closed on December 13, 2022 and applications were due on February 10 of this year, according to the Rainville website.
Maureen McDermott, assistant director of student involvement at URI, opened the event by thanking attendees for coming out to celebrate this “milestone year” of the Rainville awards and spoke about Rainville himself, someone who she had worked with during his time at the University.
“This award program was conceived as a way to recognize and acknowledge the tremendous work that Bob Rainville accomplished,” McDermott said. “It really was Bob’s daily interactions with our students that stands out the most beyond my conversations I had with him as a new professional.”
McDermott continued by praising the University for its ability to challenge student leaders to make them “shining stars on our campus.”
She then introduced President Marc Parlange, who echoed McDermott’s remarks about the program and about student leadership at URI.
After dinner was served and cleared, the awards ceremony part of the evening began, starting with the finalists for the employee excellence award.
The finalists were fourth-year Brooke Withers, a research assistant studying the resilience of sea urchins when faced with climate change conditions, Matthew Wilson, a fourth-year program assistant for the intramural sports program in Campus Recreation and fourth-year Samantha Jefferds, a team lead at the engineering computer center.
The three finalists introduced each other with a mini-speech talking about each person’s experience and involvement on campus. Julia Ruvo, a student and member of the selection committee for the employee excellence award then presented the award to its recipient, Matthew Wilson.
“Matt has significantly contributed to the campus community, most notably by introducing live-streaming championship intramural games so that family and friends can enjoy cheering our athletes on when they cannot attend in person,” Ruvo said. “The percent of student participation and athlete retention has more than doubled under Matt’s leadership.”
The next award presented was the team excellence award, which is presented to outstanding student clubs or organizations. The finalists in this category were RhodyTHON, a nonprofit organization that hosts a dance marathon each year benefiting Hasbro’s Children’s Hospital, URI Tour Guides, a team of 140 students who give tours and host welcome days for prospective students and ISTAND, an organization that provides outreach and educates the community on sexual violence.
Lucas Dewitt, the graduate assistant for the Office of Student Involvement and co-chair for the Rainville team leadership selection committee, then presented the award for team excellence to ISTAND.
“URI ISTAND utilizes a variety of multifaceted approaches to educate students, staff and faculty here on campus around the different nuances in interpersonal gender-based violence and how to recognize red flags of this behavior,” Dewitt said. “In February alone, ISTAND partnered with ‘It’s On Us’ and Uber and gifted $5,000 worth of free Uber rides on trips to provide the URI student population with a safer alternative way to get home.”
The finalists for the servant leadership award were Habitat for Humanity President Zoey Mendoza, Office of Civic Engagement employee and fourth-year student Staci Pinkowitz and coordinator for the leadership institute Caterina Ramirez. The recipient of this year’s award was Staci Pinkowitz.
“One of the most impressive projects she [Staci] organized has been a vital documents clinic with the House of Hope CDC for students that assisted people experiencing homelessness and growing up post documentation,” second-year Mary Godek said after she presented the award.
Lastly, the student leadership award recipient was announced. Each finalist is involved in many ways on campus. The finalists were fourth-year Christopher Bove, speaker of assembly of the URI Student Senate, fourth-year Julia Al-Amir, president of the Middle Eastern Student Association and fourth-year Angel Vega, coordinator of new student programs. The recipient of the award was Christopher Bove.
“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to be a part of this community,” Bove said. “And I really hope that the future generation of leaders help build up what we started. I know that all of you think big and this institution has many places to go so thank you for honoring me with this tonight.”
Closing remarks were given by McDermott, who thanked all of the nominees and people involved with planning this event.