Maria Schuchardt was named a recipient of a 2020 University Award for Excellence, which recognizes outstanding service to the university community and visitors. Maria has been a Program Coordinator with LPL since 1991. As part of her duties as Data Manager for the Space Imagery Center, Maria offers and organizes tours of the facility, facilitates access to the collection for researchers as well as the public, and provides educational resources and kits to visitors and educators. However, she goes above and beyond these responsibilities by coordinating outreach activities for the entire department and working with other campus groups to support university projects and better serve local communities. She developed the idea of an annual public science event in the Kuiper building; this “Summer Science Saturday” program has become extremely popular in the community and draws several hundred visitors each year on a Saturday in July. She devotes many long hours to organizing the event, creating the displays, and inviting and communicating with local science groups who look forward to participating and working with Maria every year. When the Tucson Festival of Books came on the scene, Maria began coordinating the “Science City” section, in part because she knew the groups that could be counted on to provide activities. Another programmatic highlight is the very popular LPL Evening Lecture Series; Maria solicits the speakers and advertises the talks to the distribution list she maintains, in addition to the community at large.

Maria's efforts also support the work done by other groups at LPL. When the department’s external advisory board decided to try to put together an outreach committee to bring together groups doing K-12 outreach in Tucson, she became the glue that bound them together, supporting their (evening) meetings, and participating in many events that they organized around town. Maria serves as a point of contact for outreach requests from the community, working to ensure that LPL faculty, staff, and students have the opportunity to share their work with schools and groups around Tucson. In addition, she is actively involved with other department activities and special events such as The Art of Planetary Science. Maria's reputation extends well beyond Tucson; for example, each year, Maria hosts a group of Norwegian students on a science tour of the U.S. She is always "in demand" in part because she infuses every interaction with joy, positivity, and enthusiasm for communicating science.

LPL and the University of Arizona are fortunate to have a science ambassador as dedicated as Maria; she truly embodies the spirit of the University Award for Excellence.