FACILITIES MANAGER
Summer 2026
CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE
APPA'S 2026 AWARD WINNERS EMBODY SERVICE, INNOVATION, AND STEWARDSHIP
Every campus tells a story about the people who care for it. Behind well-lit classrooms, comfortable residence halls, and grounds that welcome students back each fall stand facilities professionals whose work rarely makes headlines but always makes a difference. Once a year, APPA pauses to put those stories front and center.
The 2026 award winners represent the full breadth of what leadership in educational facilities looks like: decades of quiet, faithful service, rising leaders who rebuild and reimagine their chapters, and institutions whose programs prove that operational excellence and environmental stewardship go hand in hand. From a K-12 district in Oklahoma to an urban research campus in Atlanta, this year's honorees remind us that the profession's impact reaches every corner of the educational community. All will be recognized at the APPA Annual Conference this July.
MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
First presented in 1958, the Meritorious Service Award is APPA's highest honor for individual service, bestowed on members who have made significant, life-long contributions to the profession of educational facilities management. Given to no more than three individuals each year, the award recognizes sustained leadership at the international, regional, and chapter levels. This year, APPA honors two recipients whose careers span the profession's full spectrum, from K-12 districts to research universities.
Jessica Pepoy, Wolcott Public Schools
Jessica Pepoy has served APPA from the ground up. Her nominator traces a 12-year arc that begins with cultivating student interns and emerging professionals and culminates in helping select the association's own chief executive, a journey that captures what lifelong service to the profession truly means.
Jessica's early APPA years centered on the talent pipeline. As ERAPPA's representative on the Emerging Professionals Committee from 2014 to 2018 and a member of the Student Internship Task Force, she invested in the next generation of facilities leaders long before she held a title of her own. Service on the Mentoring, Professional Affairs, and Awards and Recognition committees followed, along with roles as SNEAPPA representative, ERAPPA vice president for professional development, and president-elect. Then came the true test: elected ERAPPA president in 2019, Jessica ended up leading the region for three years rather than the standard one-year term, steering member institutions through the uncertainty of the global pandemic and keeping the region connected and supported when it mattered most.
Today, as Facilities Director for Wolcott Public Schools, Jessica serves on APPA's international board as ERAPPA Regional Director through 2026, and in 2024 she was entrusted to co-chair the APPA President and CEO Search Committee, a direct role in shaping the association's long-term trajectory and a reflection of the deep respect she has earned from peers across the international community. A frequent presenter at ERAPPA annual conferences, she is now co-chairing the 2026 ERAPPA Annual Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, and remains
active in the Connecticut School Building and Grounds Association, advancing professional standards for K-12 facilities leaders across her state.
Thomas W. Jones, Clemson University
For 34 years, Tom Jones has been the kind of member every association hopes to have: present, prepared, and generous with his time. A University Director at Clemson University, Tom has served on the SCAPPA board in nearly every capacity, including vice president, president, treasurer, and conference chair, while climbing the full SRAPPA leadership ladder from second vice president through president and past president, and continuing today as SRAPPA's vice president for conferences.
Tom's deepest legacy may be in the classroom. A certified facilitator for APPA's Supervisor's Toolkit since 2008, he helped shape the program's 2018 revision and has facilitated more than 50 classes for SRAPPA and APPA, equipping generations of frontline supervisors with the skills to lead. His nominator recalls a February 2010 Toolkit session at Appalachian State University where the lead facilitator was losing his voice; Tom drove up from Clemson to step in, a small story that captures a career of showing up when the profession needed him. A contributing author to the fourth edition of APPA's Operational Guidelines for Educational Facilities: Custodial, Tom earned his CEFP in 2018 and received the APPA President's Award in 2023. At Clemson, he has chaired the university's Solid Green and Environmental committees, extending his stewardship beyond the shop floor to the campus community.
PACESETTER AWARD
The Pacesetter Award encourages continued involvement in APPA among members who have already made significant contributions to their regions or chapters. It celebrates emerging leaders whose energy strengthens the association from the ground up. The 2026 recipients have done exactly that, one by elevating a thriving region and one by rebuilding a chapter from scratch.
Dr. Ayodele Akinola, Truckee Meadows Community College
In eight years as an APPA member, Dr. Ayodele Akinola has held virtually every leadership post PCAPPA offers, serving as chair of information and communications, president-elect, president, and past president, and currently chairing the region's Small and Community Colleges group. As Associate Vice President of Facilities and Campus Operations at Truckee Meadows Community College, he has overseen transformative capital projects and championed sustainability initiatives that earned the college an EPA Green Power Leadership Award.
Dr. Akinola's fingerprints are all over APPA's educational and editorial life. He hosted the first APPA Supervisor's Toolkit at TMCC, expanding access to supervisory training for facilities professionals across Northern Nevada, particularly those at smaller institutions. He has served on the APPA President's Committee and the Communications Strategy Committee, reviewed submissions for the Rex Dillow Award, and peer-reviewed multiple Facilities Manager articles. He is also a two-time Facilities Manager author, contributing "TMCC Facilities: A Commitment to Environmental Sustainability" in 2021 and "What Is Best for a Facilities Culture of Care: Mentor, Facilitator, Manager, or Leader?" in 2023. Beyond APPA, he serves as president of the Northern Nevada Facilities Management Association and sits on the board of Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful, modeling the servant leadership his nominators describe as the hallmark of his career.
Larin Davis, Ponca City Public Schools
When the Oklahoma chapter of APPA (OACUPPA) experienced a complete board turnover, it could easily have faded away. Larin Davis made sure it did not. Stepping in as membership chair during the chapter's most
fragile moment, she rebuilt its operational structure from scratch, launched a strategic recruitment drive to re-engage members, and helped restore the chapter's financial health and professional reputation. Her peers responded by electing her president-elect.
Now Executive Director of Operations at Ponca City Public Schools, Larin has served on the host committee for four OACUPPA statewide conferences, managing advertising, venue logistics, and budgets to keep professional development accessible and financially sustainable for facilities professionals across the state. Her commitment to education runs deeper still: while managing operations at Oklahoma State University, she identified a gap in technical training around interpersonal skills and partnered with Meridian Technology Center to build a custom curriculum in deescalation and conflict resolution for frontline staff. A CEFP credential holder, Larin coauthored "Redefining Collaboration for More Successful Project Management" in the March/ April 2024 issue of Facilities Manager, and she has carried her leadership into the wider community as campaign chair and building committee chair for the United Way of Payne County.
EFFECTIVE AND INNOVATIVE PRACTICES AWARD
APPA's Effective and Innovative Practices Award recognizes programs and processes that enhance service delivery, lower costs, increase productivity, improve customer service, generate revenue, or otherwise benefit the educational institution. Projects displaying a high level of innovation and adaptability for implementation at other schools rise to the top.
Auburn University
As a silver tsunami of retirements sweeps the skilled trades, taking decades of institutional knowledge with it, Auburn University Facilities Management decided to stop competing for scarce talent and start producing it. The result is "The Loveliest Pipeline on the Plains," a three-tiered apprenticeship ecosystem that meets future technicians wherever they are, from high school shop class to full-time employment.
The tiers work in concert. Auburn's Registered Apprenticeship, run through the department's NCCER-accredited training site, hires apprentices as full-time employees from day one under a hire once, develop for a career model, pairing them with journey-level master mentors. FAME on the Plains, delivered with Southern Union Community College, puts students in class two days a week and on campus three, earning an associate degree while working alongside Auburn technicians. And a pre-apprenticeship with Auburn City Schools' Career and Technical Education program brings high school students into the shops for hands-on experience, with stipends fully funded by the City of Auburn in a creative town-gown arrangement that costs the university nothing in payroll.
The retention numbers tell the story: 75 percent for registered apprentices, 80 percent for FAME students, and 100 percent for the inaugural pre-apprenticeship cohort of seven. In 2023, Alabama recognized the Registered Apprenticeship as a statewide best practice. Because the model rests on standardized NCCER curriculum and modular partnerships, it can be adapted by institutions of any size. As the submission puts it, "We don't just maintain buildings; we build the people who do."
SUSTAINABILITY INNOVATION AWARD
The Sustainability Innovation Award recognizes institutions that have implemented significant or transformative programs creating a greener, more sustainable campus environment while supporting student success and environmental stewardship. This year, two institutions at opposite ends of the country show what circular thinking looks like in practice: one gave a building's worth of furniture a second life, and the other turned yesterday's lunch into tomorrow's landscape.
University of California San Francisco
When UCSF began decommissioning its 400,000-square-foot Laurel Heights campus, convention said the furniture inside would head to construction and demolition waste streams, where even San Francisco's best sort lines recover only 64 percent of material. UCSF's Recycling Program saw something else: a resource. Working without dedicated funding and relying entirely on existing university tools, the team cataloged more than 1,000 pieces of furniture in SmartSheets, then distributed them to the campus community through a Qualtrics request system with a point-based priority model.
The results speak for themselves. The initiative diverted 64.9 tons of furniture, 1,765 individual pieces, from disposal, with 25.7 tons donated to eight local nonprofits and the rest reused across UCSF. Recipients offset an estimated $809,540 in furniture purchases, and the project saved roughly $50,000 in disposal costs while shortening the decant timeline. Three nonprofits described the donations as organization-changing, with one educational nonprofit redirecting $15,000 originally budgeted for office furniture back into programming for children. The team has since built a furniture valuation calculator covering more than 460 furniture types, drafted a standard operating procedure, and replicated the model on two additional buildings, proof that a program born of resourcefulness can become standard practice.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Tech's In-Vessel Composting and Campus Composting Initiative is the first large-scale in-vessel composting system on an urban campus in the Southeast, processing up to 1,000 pounds of organic waste each day,
roughly 175 tons per year, nearly half of the approximately 400 tons the Institute composts annually. Acquired through a grant from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, the system delivers a return on investment of less than two years while cutting landfill tipping fees, hauling costs, and the methane emissions that come with sending organics to landfill.
What sets the program apart is how thoroughly it is woven into campus life. Students run the operation, collecting compost by electric bike and cart, leading tours, and, through the VIP Energy Solutions class, installing solar panels on the composter itself in support of the Institute's net zero energy goals. Finished compost feeds the landscapes of a campus recognized as an ArbNet Level II accredited arboretum, closing the loop from dining hall to garden bed. The initiative advances Georgia Tech's Climate Action Plan and Living Campus framework while serving as a living classroom, and its contained, scalable design offers a replicable model for spaceconstrained campuses everywhere.
REX DILLOW AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ARTICLE
Presented since 1987, the Rex Dillow Award honors the best article published in Facilities Manager magazine during the previous publication year, judged on content, interest, readability, applicability, and ease of editing. The 2026 award goes to a piece that gives facilities officers both a financial framework and the courage to use it.
Dean Hansen, P.E., and Mike Dunnavant, University of Mississippi
In "A Strategic Shift," co-authors Dean Hansen, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Facilities Officer, and Mike Dunnavant, Director of Facility Services, chronicle how the University of Mississippi broke from lowest-bid procurement and made life cycle cost analysis the north star of its infrastructure decisions. Empowered by Mississippi's Energy Efficiency Services legislation, Ole Miss launched a multi-phase energy savings performance contract that has touched nearly every corner of campus, from building controls and central plant equipment to an LED retrofit across 93 buildings projected to deliver $13.8 million in combined utility and material savings over 20 years.
The article's reach extends beyond the balance sheet. Ole Miss paired its infrastructure program with engineering capstone projects that put students to work on real campus energy challenges; 22 students have completed capstones tied to the program, and ten have been hired by the university's energy services partner upon graduation. As Hansen and Dunnavant write, life cycle costing is not just a financial technique but a mindset, one that builds resilience, fosters sustainability, and makes institutions future-ready. It is exactly the kind of practical, generously shared knowledge the Rex Dillow Award exists to celebrate.
A PROFESSION THAT INVESTS IN ITSELF
Look across this year's winners and a pattern emerges. Tom Jones drove to another campus to teach when a colleague lost his voice. Larin Davis rebuilt a chapter no one would have blamed her for letting go. Auburn's master technicians take high schoolers under their wing. UCSF staff walked recipients through an empty building, one piece of furniture at a time. Georgia Tech students pedal compost across campus on electric bikes. Excellence in educational facilities is rarely a single grand gesture; it is a thousand acts of stewardship, repeated until they become culture.
APPA is proud to celebrate these honorees, and prouder still of what they represent: a profession that invests in its people, its institutions, and its future. Congratulations to the 2026 award winners. Join us in recognizing them this July at the APPA Annual Conference.■