Posted: 7/22/2026
Winn provides award-winning advising
Sara Winn was watching TV with her family recently when a Nebraska Game and Parks Commission worker came on to speak about invasive species. Winn told her family she knew the worker, having advised her in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Later, Winn and her husband planned to put land into CRP, so she called a couple of agencies to find the correct person to speak with. That person also turned out to be a former student she had advised.
"I am starting to see the impact I've had long-term on professionals, students that have become professionals that are also having an impact," she said recently.
The School of Natural Resources and the larger university have seen Winn's impact also, recognizing her this year with the school’s Staff Inspiration Award and the university's Dr. Charles Riedesel Outstanding Academic Advising Award.
The Riedesel annual award recognizes one undergraduate advisor who goes beyond job duties and takes actions like coaching, supporting, counseling, guiding and empowering students to succeed. Winn received $1,000 with it and a luncheon in her honor.
The Staff Inspiration Award comes with $200 and a plaque, which the School of Natural Resources hands out at its annual spring banquet. The award is student-nominated, which Winn said made it especially meaningful to her.
"To me, it just shows the impact that I'm having, so it makes me feel good that I'm having a positive impact on students," she said. "And the name of it, 'inspiration award,' I think is meaningful, too. Whenever you can be an inspiration to somebody, that's meaningful."
She has advised undergraduate students for 20 years, starting to advise students in the environmental studies program, a joint program of the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. After two years there, she took her current position advising in the School of Natural Resources. She is part of the Student Success Team, along with Kenneth Pyle and Bridget Gross.
"We're a one-stop shop for students," she said. "We help them with anything and everything we can to make their experience at UNL as positive as possible."
Winn helps students select classes, explore interests, choose minors and find internships, volunteer work, research opportunities and jobs.
"Since I've been here for 20 years, I have a pretty good network of former students, colleagues, people that I've interacted with and worked with through different committees and things like that, so I feel like I'm a pretty good networker," she said.
With a strong network in fields related to her bachelor's degree in geography and master's in environmental planning, she has considered job options elsewhere. Still, her position at Hardin Hall continues to draw her back.
"I keep coming back to 'I love my job and I enjoy Mondays,'" she said. "It's kind of a funny saying. I always tell my students, 'Have a job where you enjoy Mondays because it's terrible to dread Mondays.'"
She said she enjoys the students, her coworkers and, as the mother of three children involved in school activities, the flexibility in scheduling that the School of Natural Resources allows. For future work, she stated the goal of doing more advising and working with university staff and faculty to improve advising not just at the college level but across the university.
When she first set out for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln from Fremont, she wanted to do something to help the environment. She wasn’t considering advising but said she now sees how advising work can have a lasting positive impact on the environment.
"In a really strange way, I feel like I'm probably doing that, because I'm helping people go out and help the environment," she said. "I've advised thousands of students at this point, and they are doing amazing things."
One of those students perhaps expressed it best in the anonymous nomination of Winn for the inspiration award.
"Without Sara, I would not have had as productive of a degree or accomplished all that I have,” the student wrote.
