Building on a Family Legacy, Lillian Radel Earns the 2026 SUNY Chancellor’s Award
Kelly Sheldon May 8, 2026
Lillian Radel is a recipient of the prestigious 2026 SUNY Chancellor's Award.
A staggering four generations of Lillian Radel’s (a double-degree student in Environmental Design and Environmental Studies) family have attended the University at Buffalo. It began with her great-grandfather, followed by her grandfather—a member of the second-ever graduating class of UB’s nurse anesthesia program—then her dad, as well as several siblings. However, among all those fellow Bulls, she stands alone as the first in her family to receive the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.
The Chancellor’s Award is the highest honor SUNY bestows upon its students, recognizing exceptional achievement across a variety of areas, including leadership; diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice; campus involvement; civics and service; research and development; and creative and performing arts. For the 2025-2026 academic year, just 15 UB students were selected for the award.
Despite her deep family roots at UB, Radel never felt pressured to attend the university herself. While weighing her options for college, her dad had brought her to North Campus to see if she could picture herself there. He took her to “his spot,” a bench situated between Baldy and O’Brian Halls where decades earlier he had taken a seat, lit a cigarette, and—in a moment of inspiration—decided to change his major from history to nursing.
Sitting beside her father on that bench—no cigarettes this time—Radel decided to put down a deposit and kickstart her own UB experience. “UB is a great university because it has 150 different undergraduate degrees,” she reasoned. “But then you have to choose one, which is the hard part.”
A fourth-generation UB student, Radel is the first in her family to receive the SUNY Chancellor's Award.
Driven by a passion for the natural environment, Radel enrolled in the Environmental Studies program in the College of Arts and Sciences. That major blends the study of natural sciences with coursework in communication and sustainability, equipping students with skills in both research and advocacy. Early on, her course options included two Environmental Design classes in the School of Architecture and Planning, and she quickly discovered how well these two areas of study complement each other.
While Environmental Studies is more scientific, centering on biology and how we impact the environment, Environmental Design explores how the art of design shapes the places where we live, empowering students to create places that are not only beautiful, but sustainable, healthy, and equitable. “It’s been interesting to take my one learned experience and see how it influences the other,” she explained. “They go hand in hand.”
Halfway through her sophomore year, Radel declared Environmental Design as her second major.
By the time she reached the upper-level design studios, Radel was really hooked. In her capstone studio this year, the group tackled a project centered on the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood on Buffalo’s east side. The focus was on revitalizing the area adjacent to the Buffalo Central Terminal and finding ways to connect that historic structure with the surrounding neighborhood as its redevelopment progresses. “There was a lot of discussion around street trees and bike paths, urban agriculture, and urban forestry,” she recalled. “I loved seeing how those connections could be applied in a real-life scenario.”
Lillian Radel, double-degree student in Environmental Design and Environmental Studies.
One of the biggest adjustments that she’s encountered in Environmental Design was letting go of the idea that every problem has a “right” answer. Students are presented with complex, real-world challenges and often given substantial agency to define project goals, approaches, and constraints. “It’s interesting to have to find the path through it,” Radel reflected. “You can put dozens of hours into something and then the group goes in a different direction. You can’t take that personally, which is really hard. But it’s great for preparing you for what real life will be after graduation.”
She appreciates the program’s broad scope and the many ways that she and her classmates can apply the skills that they’re developing. While her own interests center on ecological systems and living environments, others have gravitated toward a variety of different subjects ranging from housing to healthcare to geographic information systems (GIS). “You end up with this very diverse group of people learning this framework that has a huge impact,” she noted, adding that faculty actively support and nurture those varied interests.
Those professors have also shaped her understanding of professional practice and modeled how an urban planner can positively impact a community. Many serve on boards of local nonprofit organizations, and Radel enjoys seeing how that work merges into their field and relates to their own personal research interests. She’s also observed and admired how they navigate collaboration and friendships with colleagues who hold opposing viewpoints on different issues. “As an urban planner, you need to be able to see things from other people’s view,” she pointed out. “Why do they think that? How can you address that? And how can we move forward?”
After graduating from UB, Radel plans to pursue a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Ball State University (Muncie, IN), a field that she sees as the natural synthesis of her two undergraduate degrees. Driven by her belief in the power of green spaces to positively impact both the environment and people’s physical and mental well-being, she ultimately hopes to pursue work around the everyday interactions of people in nature, particularly green spaces in urban areas. In Buffalo, she points to Tifft Nature Preserve and the Olmsted Parks System as some of her favorite examples.
The fifteen 2026 SUNY Chancellor's Award recipients gathered in Albany to celebrate their achievement.
“I’m really interested in the restoration of natural environments,” she said, “and I’m currently doing a deep dive into how people view animals in urban and suburban areas.” That curiosity has led her to books like “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains” by Bethany Brookshire. Her lifelong interest in insects and pollinators, she explained, makes human attitudes towards animals like bees, raccoons, and spiders—which are often negative—especially intriguing. She hopes this insight will help her to find ways to integrate support for non-human species into landscapes in ways that can be embraced by the community.
She’s also drawn to opportunities to apply nature-driven solutions to the work of energy-conscious design teams. “For instance,” she imagined, “if you put a tree here, it’ll shade this window, so people won’t have to put on their air conditioning or close the blinds.”
Receiving the SUNY Chancellor’s Award carries deep personal significance for Radel. After four years of intensive coursework and community-focused pursuits, she’s grateful for the recognition. But just as important, she said, is knowing that UB truly values the principles that the award represents. “This will be on my record for the rest of my life,” she reflected. “And with so many relatives who went to UB,” she added, “it means a lot to say that I’m the first.”