Ohio University’s regional campuses took home seven of the evening’s 10 honors at the Community Engagement Awards on Nov. 5 in Athens, and the Southern Wayne Advocacy Council was named the university’s Community Partner of the Year, Ohio University announced.
The awards opened Engage OHIO 2026, the university’s Community and Place-Based Engagement Symposium, at the Ridges Auditorium in Athens. Each Ohio University campus honors one Outstanding Community Partner a year, and one is selected as the university-wide Partner of the Year. This year’s honorees included partners from all five regional campuses, along with a faculty member from OHIO Lancaster and a staff member from OHIO Southern, according to the university.
The Southern Wayne Advocacy Council has worked alongside OHIO Southern since May 2023, when the partnership took root through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Recreation Economy for Rural Communities program in Lawrence County, the university said. With the Ironton Rotary Club and more than 50 volunteers, the council turned a grassy patch at the end of the Ironton floodwall trail into the Pocket Pollinator Garden and Buddy Bench at Storms Creek Park — a learning and gathering space that now serves an estimated 250 to 500 walkers and cyclists each month. The council has also connected OHIO Southern biology faculty with hundreds of fourth graders at the Wayne National Forest’s Forestry Fair and brought about 100 Lawrence County high school students into riverfront and forest cleanups.
In Zanesville, Principal Stephanie Hilliard and the first-grade team at Zane Grey Elementary School were honored for a literacy partnership with OHIO Zanesville, Ohio University said. In fall 2025, senior education majors assessed 21 first graders, analyzed their reading data and delivered targeted interventions, while Zane Grey teachers, literacy coaches and administrators served as mentors. The partnership, built on a relationship of more than 25 years, expanded this fall.
OHIO Eastern’s honoree, Captina Conservancy, has partnered with the campus since 2021 and hosts the Rural Teacher Corps for field trips, workshops and volunteer opportunities, the university said. In the 2025-26 academic year alone, Corps members collected 14 oral histories at the Conservancy’s Creekin’ Festival and co-hosted a Smokey Bear Family Hike that brought more than 80 children and family members to Dysart Woods, one of Ohio’s last remaining old-growth forests.
OHIO Lancaster honored the Fairfield County Common Pleas and Juvenile Court team, whose members lead a Community Resilience Model workshop for students each semester and have hosted restorative justice simulations and a family fun night for court-involved youth, according to the university. The Athens campus honored Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio, a partner of the Center for Law, Justice and Culture since 2016. Dr. Lewatis McNeal, vice provost for Regional Higher Education, opened the evening and said the ceremony inspired him to produce an impact report for regional higher education. “It inspired me to think about how we tell our story,” McNeal said in the university’s account of the event. “How do we talk about the wonderful things that are happening in our communities? How do we uplift people?”
Photo: Ed!, CC BY-SA