Jordan Todd is awarded the Outstanding New Professional Award

This award is presented to an individual who has worked one to five years in the student affairs field and has contributed in various positive ways to student and professional culture in the JMU community.

This year’s nominees were all amazing, and the selection committee had a tough time narrowing down a winner. So tough, in fact, that they ultimately decided to award two outstanding individuals with this honor this year.

Our first award winner is described as an exceptional colleague. This individual is committed, intentional, thoughtful, and encouraging. They are a fierce advocate for students in multiple arenas, never hesitating to speak truth to power.

He is generous with his time, his expertise, and his counsel, helping raise all of us up over this past year in providing needed professional development to staff across the division and helping to foster intentional spaces for reflection and introspection.

He has been an instrumental part of the Curricular Approach process and leadership team, serving as an “air traffic controller” to help other departments engage in and navigate this process. He has been a key leader in the SJI Council. He is a trusted leader in the Racial Equity Task Force Change Maker team. And he’s done it all while running DEEP Impact programming and supervising and training student employees to carry out very difficult dialogues on DEI topics that most professional staff are not equipped to do.

One nominator states: Since I’ve known him, he has sought ways to transcend the artificial barriers and hierarchies we set for ourselves in order to make JMU a better place.

We are proud to present this Outstanding New Professional award to Jordan Todd.