President’s Awards for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers

Selection Process

The nominations received by the President’s Office are reviewed by a faculty committee made up of prior awardees from all three campuses. The committee provides an unranked short list of nominees to the President for selection.

The committee bears in mind that distinguished scholarship can take on vastly different forms depending on the scholar’s field, and that scholarship is demonstrated and documented in myriad ways. Likewise, evidence of faculty members’ teaching excellence can be found in multiple sources, including (but not limited to) course evaluations, project mentoring, dissertation direction, laboratory and clinical supervisions, and in the accomplishments of students after leaving Georgetown.

Nominations

All members of Georgetown’s community are invited to nominate exceptional faculty members who have spent a substantial amount of their careers at Georgetown and who remain dedicated both to ambitious ground-breaking research and to student engagement and excellence in teaching, both of which are hallmarks of our student-centered research university. Self-nominations are not possible for this award. Faculty in administrative roles above the level of unit head are ineligible for this award while serving in those administrative roles. A faculty member can only win the award once.

Nominators may, if they wish, solicit additional nomination letters from others to support their nominations, and/or may include quotes from those letters. It is very important to note that nominators must be vigilant about issues of power that can arise where they request letters from more junior colleagues and students. The utmost care should be taken to ensure that any solicited nomination letters are freely given by those who do not feel coerced in any direct or indirect way.

Nominators are encouraged to highlight evidence of scholarship and teaching excellence as well as to demonstrate the connections between these two elements. The committee recognizes that nominations from students may focus primarily on teaching and mentoring, but encourages faculty nominations to provide evidence of how scholarship and teaching have been integrated across the careers of the nominees. It is also helpful for nominations to provide contextual information, for example, in relation to research, nominations should include information on the relative prestige in the field of the publication venues, awards, grants, and prizes, as well as explaining what citation counts mean in relation to the specific research area. In relation to teaching, it is helpful for nominations to explain how many classes have been required vs. electives, which classes are considered large or small in the context of the department or unit and so on.

What to include in nominations

A CV for each nominee should be submitted along with the nomination. Teaching evaluation scores are provided to the committee for the finalists by the EVP offices of each campus and so do not need to be included.

Eligibility and renomination

Each year, the committee receives far more worthy nominations than can be put forward to the President. Highly deserving candidates cannot all win. Nominators, and nominees, should not be discouraged by a failure to win in any given year, however. All candidates who reach the stage of final discussion by the committee prior to the selection of finalists forwarded to the President will automatically be kept in the pool for two more years. (Their nominators will be contacted and invited to update their letters and provide updated CVs for their nominees.) Renominations are welcome.

Past awardees

Since 2013, the President’s Awards have honored faculty members who have enriched and strengthened our University community through a dual commitment to outstanding scholarship and exceptional teaching. Below is a complete list of our past honorees.