Section Awards and Recognition
Section awards and recognition recognize those that go above and beyond to fulfill SPE’s mission by serving local members. The awards honor exemplary efforts in industry engagement, operations and planning, community and social outreach, and more.
Presidential Award for Outstanding Section
The Presidential Award for Outstanding Section is the highest honor a section can receive. It recognizes the top 10 percent of eligible sections that are exemplary in the scoring categories. The awards are presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition.
Section Excellence Award
The Section Excellence Award is the second highest honor a section can receive. It recognizes up to the next 20 percent of eligible sections that have accomplished an admirable level of success. A certificate is emailed to all designated sections.
View Award Winners
Eligibility and Judging
In order to be considered for awards, sections must meet the following maintenance criteria at the 1 June annual report deadline:
- Must have minimum 25 members
- Must have at least three core officers on file: Chair, Program Chair, Membership Chair, Secretary, Treasurer
- Must have a Student Chapter Liaison if the section sponsors at least one student chapter
- Cannot be non-compliant
- Must submit an annual report by 1 June
- Must opt into awards consideration within the annual report
Each section will demonstrate a different level of activity in the scoring categories below - depending on initiative, size, and resources. To normalize the varying sizes, sections are divided into five size groups according to the section's total paid membership as of 31 December. The size groups are Small, Medium, Large, Mega, and Super Mega. Super Mega consists of sections with membership of 2,000 or greater.
The other size groups are evenly divided. Divisions are predicted to result in up to the following number of awards:
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Presidential Award for Outstanding Section |
2 per size group |
1 |
|
Section Excellence Award |
10 per size group |
3 |
Recipients are selected through two rounds of review. In the first round, SPE Regional Staff Manager create a shortlist of their regions to advance to the next round. In the second and final round, Regional Directors review and finalize the recipients.
Categories and Weights
- Technical Dissemination – 30%
- Technical activities such as field trips, symposiums, technical presentations, and training courses
- Professional Development – 20%
- Professional activities such as career events, mentor programs, and soft skills training
- Engaging, Retaining, and Growing Membership – 20%
- Member programs such as awards, networking, new member welcome, volunteer recognition, unemployed members, Young Professionals, and Senior Professionals
- Methods for growth retention, and student-to-professional conversion
- Programs made exclusive to members only
- Student support
- Community Involvement – 15%
- Community activities such as youth and teacher education and community service
- Operations and Planning – 15%
- Goals
- Use of committees
- Succession plan
- Communications and the sample uploaded communication
Regional Section Recognition
This program aims to spotlight those doing excellent work within their SPE regions but not achieving a global Presidential or Excellence Award. The program recognizes those that are innovative, have a particularly noteworthy program, or are making great progress.
Regional Directors establish the selection process for their respective region(s). The regional winners should not exceed 25% of all sections not achieving a global award that year. A certificate is emailed to all recognized sections.