Sustainability award winners announced!

The UM Sustainability Awards recognize and celebrate the collaborative efforts of students, staff and faculty to advance UM’s commitment to excellence and leadership in sustainability. The following winners of the 2025 Sustainability Awards were selected by a committee and received their personalized awards leading up to Earth Day on April 22.

Undergraduate Student Sustainability Award

Sahand Babaie, Undergraduate Sustainability Award Winner

The Undergraduate Sustainability Award recognizes an undergraduate student who has led an initiative or project to advance sustainability. This initiative or project can be part of course work or take place outside of the learning environment.

Award Recipient: Sahand Babaie, Faculty of Science B.Sc. (General)

Sahand Babaie has been an active volunteer on sustainability projects across campus, including as president of the Science Student’s Association, where he led the work of digitalizing services to help decrease paper waste and shifting away from plastic cutlery to sustainable options. Babaie’s additional volunteer experience includes as a sustainability ambassador with the Office of Sustainability, recycling wood furniture with the Sustainability in Action Facility (SiAF), as social media coordinator for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) HUB, and as a student representative on the Sustainable Building Manitoba Board.

Recently, Babaie has been a participant in the SDG youth certificate classes put on by the Canadian Sustainable Development Solution Network and will be receiving his certification this spring.

Graduate Student Sustainability Award

Heather Eckton, Graduate Sustainability Award Winner

The Graduate Sustainability Award recognizes a graduate student who has led an initiative or project to advance sustainability. This initiative or project can be a part of course work or take place outside of the learning environment.

Award Recipient: Heather Eckton, Faculty of Education, PhD program

Heather Eckton is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education, the Climate Action Team Leader with Seven Oaks School Division, and the founder and program coordinator of the Sustainable Living Academy Manitoba in the Seven Oaks School Division. She is also a member of the Expert Advisory Council on the Environment and Climate Change and is a founding member of the Educators for Climate Action Manitoba.

Eckton’s doctoral research focusses on excellence in climate change education and transformational learning. She proposes to build capacity among MB school teachers towards climate change education.

Student Group Sustainability Award

The Student Group Sustainability Award recognizes a group of students who have led an initiative or project to advance sustainability at UM. This group also has made and will continue to make a lasting positive impact on the environmental, economic and social well-being of students at the University of Manitoba.

Prairie iGEM, Student Group Sustainability Award Winner

Award Recipient: Prairie iGEM

Prairie iGEM is a multidisciplinary student group targeting UN sustainable development goals through science and technology. Over two consecutive years, Prairie iGEM dedicated the team’s efforts to solve the polylactic acid (PLA) plastic pollution problem in Manitoba, by developing an engineered plastic eating bacteria that could improve PLA composting under challenging conditions.

The team researched waste management approaches used both within the university and across our province and created educational materials and programs for university members and visiting school students. Through these initiatives and in cooperation with different faculties and organizations, Prairie iGEM has contributed to the development of new strategies to manage waste in Manitoba.

Faculty Sustainability Award

The Faculty Sustainability Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated exceptional and continuous integration of sustainability into their teaching, research and engagement activities. This individual creates engaging opportunities for students through experiential learning, course design, innovative research and assignment creation. This person also shows a keen interest in campus related activities and sustainability as a whole.

Award Recipient: Dr. Joe Curnow, Educational Administration, Foundations & Psychology, Faculty of Education

Dr. Joe Curnow, Faculty Sustainability Award Winner

Dr. Joe Curnow has a track record of impactful research, community education, and international sustainability leadership. Curnow’s research explores how environmental activists learn through participation in social movements. Through participatory action research with fossil fuel divestment activists, her study examined a climate campaign with the potential to reveal both how mainstream environmental spaces become default spaces of Whiteness, masculinity, and settler-coloniality, as well as how these groups can become politicized, resisting social relations of dominance and centering reconciliation in their approach to climate justice.

Curnow’s research on sustainability learning has garnered prestigious awards. Curnow’s recent community-based education initiatives support sustainability organizing in Winnipeg. As part of the UM Social Justice Hub launch, she facilitated a Direct Action Organizing intensive workshop with cycling activists from UM and across Winnipeg. She has mentored community leaders as they develop practices to scale up their advocacy for sustainable transport infrastructure and safety policies.

For more than twenty years, Curnow has been active in sustainability and environmental activism.

Staff Sustainability Award

Debbie Armstrong, Staff Sustainability Award Winner

The Staff Sustainability Award recognizes an individual staff member’s efforts to educate, advocate and advance sustainability within their department and/or unit. This person shows a keen interest in campus-related activities and sustainability as a whole. Sustainability may or may not be defined in this person’s job responsibilities.

Award Recipient: Debbie Armstrong, Centre for Earth Observation Science, Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources

Debbie Armstrong goes above and beyond to make UM a more sustainable place through her initiatives, teaching and research. Armstrong was instrumental in applying for and receiving a Strategic Initiative Fund to install a first of its kind solar panel system at the Sea-Ice Research Facility. She advances sustainability through cutting-edge environmental research in the ultra-clean trace elements laboratory, where she monitors pollutants and climate change indicators. And as an instructor, Armstrong is sure to include teaching on climate change and sustainability aspects in her courses.

Collaborative Sustainability Award

Period Poverty and Equity on Campus and Beyond, Collaborative Sustainability Award Winner

The Collaborative Sustainability Award recognizes a unique collaborative effort between students, faculty, staff and community members to integrate sustainability into a project or initiative. This unique category puts emphasis on interdepartmental interactions at UM in efforts to find solutions to sustainability-related challenges.

Award Recipient: Period Poverty and Equity, on Campus and Beyond

The Period Poverty and Equity, on Campus and Beyond (PPECB) project is a collaborative project based at the Center for Human Rights Research (CHRR). The PPECB project utilizes a menstrual justice lens to bring together faculty, staff, students and organizations to address period poverty (the increased economic vulnerability resulting from the financial burden posed by the need for menstrual supplies) and promote a broader vision of menstrual justice.

The PPECB was initially funded by a University of Manitoba Strategic Initiatives Award. This one-year project was anchored by an interdisciplinary and inter-faculty research team consisting of CHRR manager Dr. Pauline Tennent, Dr. Adele Perry (Arts), Dr. Julia Smith (Arts), and Dr. Lindsay Larios (Social Work), and supported by Heather Stark of the Office of Sustainability. The PPECB employed two graduate students, Chloe Vickar (Master of Human Rights) and Mikayla Hunter (Master of Community Health Sciences) and three undergraduate students: Bethel Alemaio (Arts), Hannah Belec (Arts), and Victoria Romero (Arts). The PPECB project has engaged approximately 80 volunteers, many of them students and a smaller number of staff and faculty.

Interested in nominating an individual or group for the Sustainability Awards? Keep an eye out for next year’s call for nominations in early 2026.

Office of Sustainability