Some of the members of the Family and Community Health Sciences SNAP-Ed team pictured at the Presidential Employee Excellence Recognition Awards at the Rutgers Club. Photo credit: Nick Romanenko.
Rutgers Cooperative Extension’s Family and Consumer Health Sciences (FCHS) SNAP-Ed Team members were among the more than 40 employees honored with Presidential Employee Excellence Recognition Awards in December at the Rutgers Club. The universitywide awards recognized both individuals and teams for their service to students and employees, for their role in cultivating a beloved community, for making a lasting difference beyond the university’s borders and for excellence in their work.
The FCHS SNAP-Ed team was presented a Rutgers Outstanding Service Award, which recognizes faculty, staff and/or a team that demonstrate a relentless determination to make a lasting difference beyond the university’s borders. The recipients must “display a demonstrated commitment to moving society toward a greater common good and encourage constructive collaboration in service to our local and global communities.”
Team members include Luanne Hughes, Julie Frazee, Joan Healy, Brian Quilty, Katelyn Waldeck, Pierrera Brown, Elizabeth Vargas, Dawn Mcginnis, Carly Truett, Chantielle Harris, Melanie Brill , Angela Alexander De Ramos, Catherine Diamond, Odalis Macario, Heather Doerr, Marissa Colanzi and Isabella Tullio.
The SNAP-Ed team strives to improve health and food security through nutrition education, social marketing and policy changes in New Jersey’s underserved communities. Their initiatives include direct education programs, social media campaigns and community partnerships to promote healthy eating and physical activity. Over the past year, they reached more than 35,000 residents in 30 communities and collaborated with numerous organizations to enhance food access and health resources.
This year, the 17-person team of faculty and staff also presented more than 1,600 direct educational sessions, contributing over 1,600 hours of teaching New Jersey residents how to live healthier, more food secure lives. Some of their noteworthy efforts included building edible gardens, adding pantry refrigeration to store perishables (meat, chicken, milk, eggs) that enabled community sites to provide high-quality protein for clients, adding signage and display units to promote nutritious foods, increasing access to safe, clean drinking water and establishing clubs and programs that created access to physical activity programs and sports for children.
This story originally appeared in the Rutgers Today article on the Rutgers Presidential Employee Excellence Recognition Program.
