The Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Unit Award was a U.S. government unit decoration which was established in 1992.
The Presidential Unit Citation and Joint Meritorious Unit Award were considered senior to the Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Unit Award. Additional awards of the decoration were denoted by gold award stars.
Prior to 2003, the award was a unit decoration of the United States Coast Guard. During the time period issued, it was the highest Coast Guard unit award that could be awarded and was presented to those Coast Guard units which performed outstanding service to the Coast Guard as a whole.
On November 3, 1994, Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena awarded the Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Achievement Medal to the Coast Guard as a whole. The award was mounted on a plaque and presented to Admiral Robert E. Kramek, then-Commandant of the Coast Guard. In order to provide members of the Coast Guard with a device denoting this award, the Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Unit Award was issued. This award consists of the ribbon-only to the Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Achievement Medal, mounted in a gold frame.
With the transfer of the Coast Guard from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security, the authority to award the Secretary of Transportation Outstanding Unit Award appears to have remained with the Secretary of Transportation. However, the decoration, of course, appears on some phased-out military precedence charts and is authorized for continued wear on the uniforms of Coast Guard members who have earned it.
The only post-2003 issuance of the award appears to be in 2006 when President George W. Bush awarded it to the United States Merchant Marine Academy, marking the first Presidential commencement in that academy's history.
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—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
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—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)
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