President’s Awards for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers

The President’s Awards for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at Georgetown University recognize and celebrate the integration of outstanding research and excellence in teaching at our University. The Awards not only honor the individual recipients but also emphasize standards of excellence at Georgetown.

The Awards

Each year, the President names outstanding full-time faculty members to receive the awards and be recognized as Distinguished Scholar-Teachers. Award recipients receive an annual grant of $10,000 for three academic years to support their scholarship.

Nominations

All members of the community are invited to nominate exceptional faculty members who are dedicated both to ambitious research that is highly regarded and to the sort of student engagement and excellence in teaching that is the hallmark of our student-centered research university. 

The nominations received by the President’s Office are reviewed by a faculty review committee made up of prior awardees and review committee members. All three campuses are represented on the faculty review committee. They conduct an initial review of the nominations by campus and may request additional information to supplement a nominee’s dossier, if needed, to aid their deliberations. After meeting as a full committee to deliberate, the review committee provides an unranked short list of nominees to the President for selection.

In our selection, we will keep in mind that distinguished scholarship can take on vastly different forms depending on the scholar’s field, and that it is demonstrated and documented in many ways. Likewise, we will look for evidence of faculty members’ teaching excellence not only in course evaluations, but also in other sources, such as student mentoring, including dissertation, project, laboratory and clinical supervision, and in the accomplishments of their students after leaving Georgetown. We encourage you to highlight such evidence in your nominating statement. We recognize that nominations from students may focus on the teaching element, while faculty colleague nominations may focus more on scholarly achievements. Letters from Chairs and/or colleagues help enhance student nominations. The strongest candidates will show exceptional accomplishments at the intersection of these two elements of our mission.

Renominations are welcome. Each year, the committee receives far more worthy nominations than it has awards: highly deserving candidates cannot all win. Nominators, and nominees, should not be discouraged by a failure to win in any given year, and the committee particularly wants to encourage continued nomination of exceptional candidates. Beginning with nominations received in 2018, candidates who reach the stage of the final discussion of the committee, prior to the selection of finalists forwarded to President DeGioia, will be kept in the pool for three years. Finalists not chosen by President DeGioia will naturally belong to this group.

Along with the nominating form, the EVPs’ offices will provide additional materials reflecting the nominated faculty members’ accomplishments in teaching and scholarship to the faculty review committee.

2023 Honorees
view video

Jennifer Natalya Fink, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of English
Core Faculty in the Program in Disability Studies
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Marc M. Howard (L’11), J.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Government
Director, Prisons and Justice Initiative
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Josiah Osgood, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Classics
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

2022 Honorees

Julie E. Cohen, J.D. view video
Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology
Georgetown University Law Center

Deborah A. Phillips, Ph.D. view video
Professor
Department of Psychology
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Stefano Vicini, Ph.D. view video
Professor
Department of Pharmacology & Physiology
Georgetown University Medical Center

2021 Honorees
view video

Rachel Barr, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Psychology
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Paul Butler, J.D.
The Albert Brick Professor in Law
Georgetown University Law Center

Alison Games, Ph.D.
Dorothy M. Brown Distinguished Professor of History
Department of History
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Kenneth J. Kellar, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Pharmacology & Physiology
Georgetown University Medical Center

2019 Honorees
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Alison Mackey, Ph.D.
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Linguistics
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

John R. McNeill, Ph.D.
University Professor
Department of History, Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences
and Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

Italo Mocchetti, Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair
Department of Neuroscience
Georgetown University Medical Center

Cristina Sanz, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

2018 Honorees
view video

Lisa Heinzerling, J.D.
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center

Chandan Vaidya, Ph.D.
Director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

2017 Honorees
view video

James K. Freericks, Ph.D.
Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Physics
Department of Physics
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

G. William Rebeck, Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience
Department of Neuroscience
Georgetown University Medical Center

Alexander Sens, Ph.D.
Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor of Hellenic Studies
Department of Classics
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

2016 Honorees
view video

Darlene V. Howard, Ph.D.
Davis Family Distinguished Professor
Department of Psychology
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Donald C. Langevoort, J.D.
Thomas Aquinas Reynolds Professor of Law 
Georgetown University Law Center

Anton Wellstein, M.D.
Professor of Oncology and Pharmacology 
Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
Georgetown University Medical Center

2015 Honorees 

Derek Goldman, Ph.D. view video
Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center
Professor of Theater and Performance Studies
Department of Performing Arts
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Christian Wolf, Ph.D. view video
Professor
Department of Chemistry
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

2014 Honorees

James Collins, Ph.D. view video
Professor
Department of History
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Karen Gale, Ph.D. (awarded posthumously) view video
Professor of Pharmacology
Department of Pharmacology & Physiology
Georgetown University Medical Center

Philip Schrag, J.D. view video
Delaney Family Professor of Public Interest Law
and the Director of the Center for Applied Legal Studies
Georgetown University Law Center

2013 Honorees

Der-Chen Chang, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences

Richard Schlegel, M.D. Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Pathology
Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
Georgetown University Medical Center