The Notable UT Woman Award is presented by the Commission for Women. Every year since 1995, the Commission for Women has recognized a woman whose accomplishments bring distinction to the university.

2009 Notable UT Woman Award

MARY ANNE HITT
Mary Anne Hitt is the deputy director of the National Coal Campaign for the Sierra Club. She is a 1997 graduate of the College Scholars program. Some may know her as Mary Anne Peine from her student days, when she founded SPEAK, Students Promoting Environmental Action in Knoxville.

More than a decade later, SPEAK has been instrumental in changing the campus culture. The organization led the effort to create the Student Environmental Fee, which provides funding for many initiatives and has helped make the university one of the largest purchasers of green power in the Southeast. For her College Scholars thesis, Hitt examined our campus policies regarding recycling, energy use and waste disposal, and she co-authored “The Greening of Big Orange.” Her work didn’t just sit on a shelf; she presented it to the chancellor, and it quickly became the framework for the campus’ sustainability agenda.

Hitt currently works to end mountaintop mining in Appalachia through the Sierra Club. Prior to that role, she served as executive director of Appalachian Voices and joined forces with Google Earth Outreach to bring light to the impact of the coal industry on the mountains, waterways and wildlife of the area.