Nominations now open: Robins Awards

The Bill E. Robins Memorial Award is regarded as one of the most desirable awards for students and faculty to be presented with at Utah State University. The next ceremony will be held on April 5, 2025, at 7 p.m. in the Student Taggart Center Ballroom.

Easton Martin, USU’s traditions director, will help execute the event. Despite the awards being available for USU students across the state, most participants are those on the Logan campus.

“I would say it’s definitely just Logan-centered because there’s just more students here. It’s also submitted to statewide, but we don’t have any physical marketing that’s out in the statewide campuses. Statewide students are open to nominate, open to get nominated. We’d love to have them involved in the process,” Martin said.

Nominations are open online, and an array of awards, such as Female Athlete of the Year and Organization of the Year, will be won. Nominations are accepted until 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2025.

“Say I nominated you — you would get added to a canvas course and then you would fill out an essay responding to a few questions like, ‘Here’s why I think I deserve this award’. Then it would get graded by a selection committee that’s one alumni, two faculty, two staff. They all graded based off a rubric. Whoever has the average best score of those five scores is the one who wins that specific award,” Martin said.

2023 Miss USU Regan Tracy won this year’s Achievement of the Year award. As stated on USU’s website, the award is described as being “accomplished by superior ability, distinctive effort, great courage, or heroic action.”

“I always thought it was so cool just seeing all these really awesome students get awards for just their amazing work. I always thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ll never be able to be that cool,’ Tracy said.

After being crowned Miss USU, Tracy used her platform to create a more inclusive environment for women and underrepresented groups in STEM across USU campuses.

“I ended up doing STEM outreach to over 1,000 people, not only in Cache Valley but in Salt Lake County as well. I spoke at a lot of different conferences encouraging women to come into STEM and engineering and science and stuff like that. I did a service trip with the Society of Women Engineers. Back in March, we went to the Diné Navajo Reservation, right up on the Blanding campus of USU, and we did STEM outreach to the elementary schools that are on the reservation,” Tracy said.

This work made Tracy a prime candidate for her award.

“It’s really just been such an honor. I was just blushing for days afterwards. I was just so honored. It’s just really cool to kind of see the fruition of your hard work. Like, always reminds me of the pride I have for USU and being a student here,” Tracy said.

Tracy and Martin believe this is a great way to get involved with USU.

“I think it’s a really great way to put yourself on campus —a great way for us to recognize other people and all the things that they’ve been doing. We give out these really cool trophies. It’s just a great way to highlight students. And you know, another thing to be proud of and kind of commemorate your time at Utah State,” Martin said.

After the awards ceremony ends at 8 p.m., it is followed by Black and White Jazz Night. This black-tie event will include drinks, dancing and jazz.

“It’s just super fun to sit there and be a part of the ceremony and then go party with people. The winners usually stay after to do the Black and White Jazz Night, and you just see everyone so excited. The energy is just so fun I love it,” Tracy said. “I love an excuse to dress up It’s kind of a formal event. Just a little gala, I guess you could say.”