ABOUT THE Award

The humble sticker is so much more than vinyl. It’s a tiny piece of everyday art. It’s an opportunity to show the world what you love, and here at Coates Library, we love student artwork. Every year we purchase new artwork from our talented students and display those pieces proudly on our walls, and now we want to display your work proudly on our laptops and water bottles. The “Sticker Thing” prize aims to reward and support our creative students and recognize the library as a place of both research and inspiration.

How it works

Every Fall, the library accepts student submissions for the upcoming year’s sticker. The winner will be decided by the library’s Sticker Thing Committee in early December, and the winner will be announced and awarded before the semester ends. The winning design will be printed as 3-inch vinyl stickers that will be given away by the library throughout 2026. The design will be retired at the end of the calendar year, and a new design will be awarded according to the new theme. (We can’t wait to collect them all!)

Submission Deadline

November 21, 2025

Open to

Students

Awards

One $300 prize, certificate, and inclusion in the Sticker Thing Archive. The winning sticker will be available through the library throughout 2026.

2026 Theme: “Growing Inspired”

How have you grown inspired at Coates? Have you discovered new ideas in a book that caught your eye? Did you follow citations, branching out until you discovered you have more questions than ever? We’d love to see your take on the library and the concept of growth — think plant life, nature, knowing, growing.

Submission Guidelines

2025 Sticker Thing Winner

Artist Statement

The theme of my drawing is “Knowledge is Power,” though not simply in the cheesy way the media has twisted that statement. Knowledge is not just powerful enough to get you through finals week, but it also takes power (mostly discipline, really) to work towards that position in the first place. Every semester I see students burn themselves out by relentlessly beating themselves up over bad grades, spending countless hours in the library up until it closes trying to get that last problem right. I’m guilty of this myself, but I’ve realized that while it is good to strive for success, grades don’t fully express the weight of a person’s education. Some people are bad test takers, or essay writers, or don’t speak up in class, but those are not the limits of their understanding. I’ve found peace in accepting that I will sometimes fail, and I think it’s especially powerful to not just know this, but recognize it in yourself.

I wanted to include a tiger in my design, representative of not just LeeRoy but every Trinity student that has gone through the same kind of hardships I have. The light behind the tiger’s head represents the fulfillment of not just academic success, but finding success in the journey of its pursuit. This is still, of course, a “Night at the Library,” which I originally interpreted as staying up to study. In its entirety, I suppose you could read the drawing as a student, after a long night of studying, coming to terms with their academic progression, and as a result, becoming more motivated to learn for the sake of it instead of being driven by anxiety.

What a privilege it is to be in university – to choose to struggle for the sake of knowledge.