About Our Excellence Awards
Celebrating Excellence Across Our Network
As part of Northeastern University’s commitment to excellence, we are proud to present the Staff Excellence Awards, recognizing the outstanding achievements of our talented staff. Every staff member plays a crucial role in helping Northeastern reach its organizational goals, but Excellence Award recipients go above and beyond, championing our communities and advancing the university’s mission.
Historically, the Excellence Awards at Northeastern have celebrated service, innovation, and teamwork. For 2025, these awards were reimagined to better align with our employee engagement philosophy. This new approach emphasizes not only recognition but also building community and empowering employees to succeed.
THIS COMMUNITY NEEDS YOU.
NEEDS YOUR IDEAS.
Innovation Across the Network
This award recognizes staff or teams who leveraged Northeastern’s innovative, global environment to make a significant impact across the community. They are changemakers who create unique experiences, including: Heightening Northeastern’s role in transforming higher education, facilitating cross-campus and community collaborations, and creating network-wide opportunities for Northeastern.
Strong nominations cite specific examples of how nominees: Exercise experiential learning and systems thinking, and respond to shifting contexts.
Driver of Community and Belonging
This award recognizes staff or teams dedicated to fostering a community of belonging at the university. They support initiatives that empower and elevate underrepresented voices by: Mentoring and advocating for underrepresented colleagues, leading a Northeastern Affinity Group, exercising cultural competence into their day-to-day work, building partnerships between Northeastern and local communities, and contributing to committees, groups, research, and other initiatives on campus that work to improve the Northeastern environment to reflect the varied lived experiences of those across our global network.
Strong nominations cite specific examples of how nominees: Make contributions with network-wide impact, and embody entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity.
Model Mentor and Coach Award
This award recognizes those who serve as career catalysts and cultivate relationships through mentoring and coaching colleagues as individual contributors or in management roles. These individuals support, challenge, learn, and grow with others by: Encouraging feedback from others, assisting in strategic development, inspiring confidence in others, and sharing career advancement opportunities.
Strong nominations cite specific examples of: Mentees this person may have (and includes testimonials from them), and mentorship or coaching frameworks this person utilizes or models.
Dream Team
This award recognizes teams, from duos to divisions, that work strategically and creatively to achieve exceptional results. Utilizing each team member’s strengths, they achieve the improbable. Successful teams demonstrate qualities like: Strong leadership, creative problem-solving, strategic planning, and leveraging the skills of team members to achieve shared objectives.
Strong nominations cite specific examples of how nominees: Make university-wide impact or how their activities are imperative to university function, and embody entrepreneurship and innovation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is eligible to be nominated for the Excellence Awards?
Staff members at Northeastern who fall into any of the following categories are eligible for nomination:
– Administrative Support
– Management
– Professional
– Research Staff
– Service Staff
– Full-time, part-time, and fixed-term staff
– Salaried and hourly staff
– Main campus staff and global (regional) campus staff
Who can nominate someone for an Excellence Award?
Any Northeastern faculty or staff member can nominate someone to an Excellence Award. A group may collectively nominate someone or a team for an award, in which case letters of recommendation may come from an external community member or faculty, staff, or student. However, they must be somehow affiliated with Northeastern through research or a project related to the university. The submission of the nomination must come from an individual with a Northeastern email address.
Can an individual or team that was nominated for or received an award in their division or college also be nominated for an Excellence Award?
Yes. The award nomination or receipt should be noted in their nomination.
What is the nomination process?
Nominations will be submitted via a form, which will be sent out in a university-wide email when the nomination process opens. You may also submit an Employee Engagement Inquiry through the HR Service Center to request the link during the nomination period.
When is the nomination timeframe?
The nomination call is planned to go out in September and planned to close later in the fall. This timeline may shift if any unforeseeable circumstances arise. All those who receive nominations will be notified.
Who reviews the nominations?
Nomination review teams will be made up of Northeastern staff members who are experienced in a field related to the award. These teams will put forth recommendations for review by the Senior Leadership Team.
When and how will award recipients be announced?
We plan to announce award winners in the spring. This timeline may shift if any unforeseeable circumstances arise. Award winners and their divisions will be directly notified. Nominees who do not receive the award will also be notified.
Explore Our Excellence Awards
Learn more about our awards and the nomination process.