2025 Individual Award Nomination

Please complete and submit this form to submit an individual award nomination for the 2025 Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Awards from the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC).

The ASTC Awards Committee seeks to recognize achievements in areas that explicitly align with ASTC's strategic framework:

• Support Lifelong Science Learning
• Engage Diverse Audiences
• Connect Science and Society and Partner to Tackle Local and Global Issues
• Strengthen the Organization to Thrive as a Community Leader

In addition, the 2025 awards cycle will include two additional areas of focus:

• Achievements related to the conference theme of Connectivity
• Achievements relevant to Natural History Settings

Awards for individuals will include—but not limited to—leadership in developing and applying new ideas and/or enhancing best practices. The award recognizes leadership, regardless of professional position or supervisory status, and we encourage nominations across the entire breadth of an organization’s team.

The committee will consider separately those serving in a chief executive role (i.e., CEO, Executive Director, President), other formal leaders not in CEO roles, and those demonstrating leadership regardless of title or job level. Nominations of junior, front-line, and floor staff and those new to the field are especially encouraged.

Nominations will be judged according to the individual’s degree of success at developing and/or implementing new ideas and/or enhancing best practices; having a tangible and lasting impact on the organization’s mission and/or operations; building relationships within or beyond the organization; developing the current talents/capabilities and nurturing the capacity of staff; and the potential to serve as a model of creative thinking and best practices for the field as a whole.

Please note that nominations should generally focus on leadership qualities beyond a specific project or activity. Leadership in the context of a specific project may, instead, be appropriate for an organizational award as projects are often team achievements. As such, please avoid submitting a nomination for individual leadership for a specific project that is also nominated for an organizational award.

 

Eligibility

Leading Edge Awards may be presented to ASTC-member organizations in good standing—and their staff and volunteers. This includes both Science and Museum Members and Allied Members. Organizations may submit nominations on behalf of their own achievements or for another ASTC-member organization. Nominations describing collaborations among ASTC-member organizations—including partnerships between science centers and Allied Members—are also eligible and encouraged.

Nominations should describe an achievement that has occurred since January 1, 2023.

 

Individual nominations will require acnowledgement of the nominee's supervisor and submission of an acknowledgement form.

Please provide information about the nominee's direct supervisor or manager. For chief executives, this is generally a Board chair.)

Before submitting your nomination, you will be asked to upload a completed Supervisor Nomination Acknowledgement Form.

You may download the blank form here: Supervisor Nomination Acknowledgement

For the next two questions, please consider the following definitions of these elements drawn from ASTC’s strategic framework:

• Support Lifelong Science Learning:  Efforts that demonstrate effective, evidence-based approaches to learning, including learning at all life stages, intergenerational opportunities for learning, and activities to better understand what works.

 

• Engage a Wide Range of Audiences:  Efforts that reach or invite participation from a wide range of audiences, especially those who have not traditionally partcipated in science and science engagement opportunities and/or that respond to shifting community demographics. Note that nominations and the selection process should account for institutional and community contexts.

 

• Connect Science and Society and Partner to Tackle Local and Global Issues:  Efforts that involve members’ activities to act on an issue of local or global importance, including equitable partnerships with other organizations, groups, or communities.

 

• Strengthen the Organization to Thrive as a Community Leader:  Efforts that contribute to the organization’s operations and administration so that it is adaptable, supported by a diverse and skilled staff, sustainable finances, and collaborative relationships, and that is recognized as a leader in its community.

 

This year's nominations may also draw upon the theme for the ASTC 2025 Annual Conference:

• Connectivity: Efforts that underscore the critical role science centers and the science engagement field plays in our communities, helping people connect to knowledge, with each other, and across our society.

You may optionally include one or two supporting items to provide additional context to reviewers. This may include—but is not limited to—presentations, videos, articles, illustrations, or photographs.

Please provide evidence of impact for the nominee. For example, this might include letters of reference from key partner organizations or individuals, evaluation data, research publications, news clippings, and other documentation. The aim is for nominators to provide available evidence, not necessarily to conduct additional research and evaluation.

In order for this organization's nomination application to be considered for an award and reviewed by the Awards Committee, the nominee's supervisor MUST review and sign the Supervisor Nomination Acknowledgement form.

Download the blank form: Supervisor Nomination Acknowledgement.