Last updated: August 5, 2026
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2026 Excellence in Volunteerism Awards
The Excellence in Volunteerism Awards recognize the outstanding contributions of National Park Service volunteers and the staff who work with them. These dedicated individuals and groups embody the values of service, engagement, and stewardship fundamental to our national parks.
Excellence in Volunteerism Impact Award: Team Category (formerly the Hartzog Awards)
This award recognizes multiple Volunteers-In-Parks (a group, couple, family, or collective of any age range) who have consistently volunteered and collaborated together, who may have worked on a variety of projects or may have had a more singular focus.
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Battle Road Living History Volunteers
Volunteers, Minute Man National Historical Park
The Battle Road Living History Volunteers built a community of participants to create a highly engaging and authentic living history experience at Minute Man National Historical Park. Battle Road volunteer corps grew from nearly 200 volunteers in 2023 to over 750 in 2025. They included volunteers of all ages from across the world.
The volunteers helped organize new living history groups dedicated to National Park Service interpretation standards. Groups such as “Brown’s Company” and the “Ladies Association of Revolutionary America” supported park and local partner events.
The Battle Road volunteers brought history vividly to life through high‑quality interpretive programming that deepened visitors’ understanding of the park’s Revolutionary War stories. Their commitment to authenticity, education, and collaboration made them a cornerstone of public engagement.
Excellence in Volunteerism Impact Award: Youth and Young Adult Category (formerly the Hartzog Awards)
This award recognizes a single individual, age 30 or under (non-veteran) or 35 or under (veteran), who has made a meaningful impact on their park or program.
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Lumi Barron
Volunteer, Zion National Park
Artist-in-Residence Lumi Barron's process and artwork sparked wonder, curiosity, and learning through her medium of stop motion video.
During her four-week residency at Zion National Park, Lumi made contact with 160 visitors while creating animation. Visitors were often drawn by the models that Lumi crafted and set up on moveable rigs.
Lumi shared the animation videos she created at the park on Instagram. These posts showcased both her art and her experience as a volunteer. They brought her work as an artist-in-residence to a vast audience, gaining 1.1 million views for four posts on her own Instagram and 80,000 views for one post on the park's Instagram.
Excellence in Volunteerism Impact Award: Adult Category (formerly the Hartzog Awards)
This award recognizes a single individual over age 30 (non-veteran) or over age 35 (veteran) who has made a meaningful impact on their park or program.
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Vicki Papineau
Volunteer, Rocky Mountain National Park
Volunteer Vicki Papineau supported the growth of dozens of plant species used in revegetation projects at Rocky Mountain National Park. In 2025, Vicki served over 380 hours in the park greenhouse, helping to grow and transplant 20,000 plants. She transplanted 11,500 of these on her own.
Rocky Mountain’s revegetation program is crucial for offsetting impacts from construction projects and heavy foot traffic, including in the fragile alpine tundra ecosystem. Greenhouse plants grown and transplanted by volunteers like Vicki are key to the success of the program. Rocky Mountain Conservancy provides financial support for greenhouse maintenance and improvements. The conservancy recognized Vicki and other volunteers for ensuring the success of their investment.
Vicki improved greenhouse operations by contributing to written guides. She served as a mentor for new volunteers and interns, sharing her extensive knowledge with them. She also assisted with special events like an Earth Day celebration in the greenhouse and with informal greenhouse and nursery tours for interns and volunteers.
Vicki's dedication and commitment to seed cleaning and transplanting were invaluable to the vegetation program. Her work ultimately supported preserving Rocky Mountain’s native plant communities.
Excellence in Volunteer Management Staff Award (formerly the Hartzog Awards)
This award recognizes a National Park Service staff leader who has been strategic and/or innovative in managing a volunteer program.
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Katie Hostetler
Supervisory Park Ranger, Volunteer Program Manager, Chiricahua National Monument
Supervisory Park Ranger Katie Hostetler showed exceptional leadership in volunteer management at Chiricahua and Coronado national monuments and at Fort Bowie National Historic Site. She improved the volunteers’ experiences and expanded their roles in visitor services, resource protection, and community engagement.
Katie enhanced program management in several ways. She updated uniforms and streamlined the volunteer handbook. She created new safety procedures and equipment guidelines and provided safety training. By adding variety to their roles and programs, she recruited and trained a record number of volunteers in 2025. The changes she made attracted new volunteers interested in birding, dark skies, education, and the Junior Ranger program.
Katie updated campground host duties to include visitor engagement. She revived the Artist-in-Residence Program and added youth-focused activities. She worked with one staff member to enlist volunteers in developing Chiricahua’s Junior Ranger booklet. She worked with another to formalize the Dark Sky volunteer partnership with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. Katie also mentored a volunteer ambassador who helped increase the parks’ presence in community conversations, city council meetings, and local events.
Excellence in Volunteerism Innovation Award (formerly the Hartzog Awards)
This award recognizes a volunteer initiative within a park or program that has demonstrated significant innovation or creativity in meeting a park/program goal or need through volunteerism.
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Meadow Rovers
Volunteers, Mount Rainier National Park
Meadow Rovers help protect the fragile subalpine meadows and provide safety information to visitors in the high-altitude areas of Mount Rainier National Park. The Meadow Rover program is one of the park’s most popular volunteer programs. It is at full capacity with a long waiting list for participants and an approximately 80% retention rate from year to year. In 2025, the volunteer program had 319 volunteers. They contributed 14,124 hours of service and contacted 224,758 visitors, about 1 in every 6 visitors to the park.
Impacts of the program are visible in many ways. The number and extent of landscape scars created by off-trail travel have lessened, even as park visitation continues to climb. The number of injuries and deaths have decreased. This happened as soon as the Meadow Rover program expanded into the early season snow melt-out period. Rovers enforced a trail closure to protect a Cascade fox den all summer long. Afterwards, the park celebrated its first known successful denning of Cascade foxes in many years.
The Meadow Rover program is a star example of the park’s work to engage the public in collaborative stewardship. It has long been one of the most successful fundraising achievements of the park’s partner, Washington’s National Park Fund. This fund used the rover program to raise $137,000 for the Mount Rainier volunteer program in 2025.