Walter Sullivan Award Committee

SULLIVAN AWARD COMMITTEE

Committee members

Name	Institution	Committee Role
David Hosansky	University Corporation for Atmospheric Research	Committee Chair
Rachel Berkowitz	N/A	Member
Liz Kalaugher	environmentalresearchweb	Member
Nina Lanza	Los Alamos National Laboratory	Member
Friederike Elly Luise Otto	University of Oxford	Member
Hope Garland	AGU	Staff Partner; Specialist, Media Relations
Rebecca Dzombak	AGU	Staff Partner; Specialist, Media Relations

Committee overview and charge

Named for the renowned science writer of The New York Times, the first Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism was presented to Sullivan in 1989. In 2000, it was recast as an award for science feature writing, defined as work prepared with a deadline of more than one week. It is presented annually to a journalist for a single report or series in any medium except books that makes Earth and space science accessible and interesting to the general public. Journalists typically nominate themselves by submitting their own work from the previous year. Any member of AGU may also make a nomination.

Committee members are charged with the following duties:

1

Select the recipient of the Sullivan Award; the final decision is subject for approval of the Council Leadership Team.
2

Abide by AGU’s Honors Conflict of Interest Policy.
3

Interpret the scope of the award broadly and keep in mind that as a Union award, it should reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the Earth and space sciences.
4

Promote excellence and transparency and allow broad input and recognition beyond disciplinary awards
5

Promote diversity and commitment to equity to ensure that the awards are sufficiently representative of underrepresented groups.
6

State, as part of the award recommendation to the Council Leadership Team, the number of candidates considered, how many candidates were holdovers, how many candidates are new, and whether the new candidates were nominations from general call or were actively encouraged by the committee.
7

Define the process used for reaching the decision

Member Duties

Initiatives

In addition to selecting Sullivan Awardees, committee members:

Provide feedback to AGU about the Sullivan Award’s selection processes to help ensure that the program is achieving AGU’s relevant goals.
Discuss whether new and expanded approaches to soliciting nominations are needed and, if so, recommend approaches that should be tried and how they could be carried out.
Recommend and implement strategies and initiatives on diversity.
Participate in training and orientations conducted by the Honors and Recognition committee to be fully informed of policies, processes and program elements.