The University of Alabama established Premier Awards to recognize UA students, faculty, and staff who exemplify the highest standards of scholarship, service, leadership, and character. The Sullivan Award is the oldest of the Premier Awards first awarded to UA students in 1928. The most recently endowed Premier Award, the Judy Bonner Presidential Medallion, was first awarded in 2016. SHOW ME NOW
UA Junior Marissa Navarro received the 2018 Horizon Award for her efforts in founding the first campus Hispanic Latino Association for students, faculty and staff. “Our main focus is to recruit, retain and graduate Hispanic and Latino students,” Navarro said, to make sure they do not get lost on the nearly 40,000-student campus. SHOW ME NOW
The 2018 Call to Conscience Award went to UA Professor Ellen G. Spears, author of “Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town.” Spears said she received a first-hand education from civil rights leaders, many of whom were from Alabama and became an environmental researcher to bring an end to the disproportionate amount of toxic waste being dumped in minority communities.SHOW ME NOW
The Rev. Frank Dukes was the recipient of the 2018 Mountaintop Award for his efforts in leading the Birmingham Selective Buying Campaign of 1962, while working as director of alumni affairs and public relations at Miles College, his alma mater. At the time, blacks legally could only work labor jobs and blacks and whites could not intermingle in shops and offices. SHOW ME NOW
