2007 – 2008
ANNUAL REPORT
FACULTY SENATE
STUDENT AND FACULTY HONORS COMMITTEE
I. Committee Membership
The following members comprised the 2007– 2008 Faculty Senate Student and
Faculty Honors Committee:
Linda
Gottfredson,
Kirsten Andrews, Graduate Student
Representative
Mohsen Badiey,
Jan Bibik,
Michael Gilbert, Office of the Vice President, Student Life
Rhonda
Aull Hyde,
Heidi Kaufman,
Katharine Kerrane, University Honors Program
Zachary Schafer, Undergraduate Student Representative
Mark Serva,
Ismat Shah,
Jonathan Urick, Undergraduate Student Representative
II. Technology Assistance for Committee and Faculty Senate
Need
The Committee has three major recurring
tasks: to establish criteria for and select recipients of (1) the Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Advising
and Mentoring Awards and (2) the Francis Alison Faculty Award, as well as (3)
set criteria and approve new awards for inclusion in the University Honors Day
Program booklet. Since 2000, to increase transparency, outreach, and
efficiency, the Committee has created a public website describing all awards,
criteria, and committee procedures, online forms for submitting
UDSIS-authenticated nominations for the Excellence Awards, procedures for electronic
solicitation of nominations from all UD students and staff, a database system
for processing those nominations, a secure website for viewing and archiving
nominations and other confidential tasks, electronic application forms for
including new awards in the Honors Day Program, and more. The result has been to
dramatically increase the quantity, quality, and variety of nominations for all
awards, improve the visibility and transparency of committee procedures, and augment
recognition for recipients of these prestigious UD awards.
These activities are all highly technology dependent and
also require electronic solicitation and sharing of data with various administrative
support units throughout the year. As the technological complexity of the
Committee’s tasks increased, it became harder and eventually impossible to
recruit new chairs. The system also became vulnerable to breakdown at critical
moments. Begging and borrowing assistance would no long suffice.
Request for a
Faculty Senate CITA
Urged on by technologically savvy colleagues, members
of the Committee assisted the Faculty Senate in developing a request to the
Provost for a new CITA, who would assist the Faculty Senate and this Committee
in particular. The Committee (and especially its Chair) is thrilled to report
that the request was approved, and the new CITA (Brenda Misko) and her
supervisor (Eric Cantrell) began working with the Committee in the Spring. They
will redesign, simplify, improve, implement, and manage the technological
aspects of the Committee’s Excellence Awards nomination system and website.
That work has begun and the new database system will be in place for the next
cycle of nominations.
III. Honors Day Program Booklet
Clarity and efficiency in application
procedures
The Committee clarified and posted all criteria on its website, and
developed an electronic application form. Publications now notifies applicants
that they need to submit requests on our form which, if approved, can be copied
directly to Publications. The form allows for faster turnaround of applications
and better coordination among applicants, the Committee, and Publications.
Awards
approved for inclusion
1.
·
Katherine
L. Esterly Nursing Education Scholarship
2.
·
Wayne Westerman
Entrepreneurial Scholarship Award
3.
· Gladys and Harry David Zutz Awards – approved adding a second award
· Bryce Hach Scientific Foundation Scholarship Awards
· Outstanding Senior Award (Philosophy)
· Robert W. Hancock Award
· C. Richard Quade Award
4.
· David Hollowell Endowed Scholarship
· Judy Cohen Schwartz Scholarship
5.
·
V. Possible Revision or Addition
of New Excellence Awards
Undergraduate Academic Advising Award
The award was renamed to “Advising and
Mentoring” to recognize the importance of mentoring undergraduates,
especially because much advising is not done by assigned advisors.
Advising and Mentoring by Professional Staff
The call for nominations generated numerous inquiries to the chair about
why particular individuals or classes of individuals were not eligible for the
Excellence in Advising and Mentoring Award. The issue is this. Only faculty are
eligible for the Excellence Awards, which were established for and are administered
by faculty. However, much undergraduate advising is now done by professional
staff, and admirers naturally want to honor them as well. The chair answered
all inquiries and invited suggestions. The Committee entertained but rejected
the suggestion that professionals be eligible for existing awards (which would
require intervention by the Senate) or that it set up a separate award. Neither
is feasible or within the Committee’s purview. We will, however, take the
question to the Administration and the Student Government Association for their
consideration: might they want to create a means of honoring excellent advising
by professionals?
Lifetime Limit on Excellence Awards
The Committee entertained and rejected the suggestion that it limit the
number of times an individual may receive an Excellence Award. Faculty who
continue to inspire students after decades of teaching or advising ought not be
excluded from further recognition.
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Committee entertained and rejected the suggestion that it establish a
Lifetime Achievement Award. If there is no limit on times received, there is no
reason to establish an entirely new award—and good reasons not to.
VI. Administration of Excellence
Awards
Coordination with Public Relations
Much of the Committee’s work involves communicating with the UD community
in some way, whether to solicit nominations or publicize the winners. With VP
(and member) Michael Gilbert’s help, we have begun to coordinate more closely
with John Brennan, of Public Relations. Fruits of that coordination this year
included John’s assistance in sending out our solicitations and reminders to
nominate (to all UD students and staff), additional publicity (an advertisement
in The Review and a beautiful poster which was posted in all residence halls),
and more.
Generating More Alumni Nominations
There have been two chronic problems: (1) difficulty contacting alums and
(2) alums’ difficulty accessing our nomination forms. Concerning the first
problem: UD alums do not get UD email accounts, nor has UD accumulated contact
information for many alums. That is, there has been no UD-wide system of
connecting with alums that we could tap into. The new administration plans to establish
closer ties with alums. Until that time, the Messenger, UD’s alumni magazine, will publicize the winners and the
opportunity to nominate in its Winter issue. The assistant director of Alumni
Relations also suggested that we provide that office information on making
nominations early in the calendar year so it can be one of the rotating
features on their website. The Committee will continue to discuss other
potential points of contact with alumni, previous suggestions including
inserting notices in announcements for Homecoming or to new grads.
On the second problem: All nominators need a UD userid and password to
gain access to the nomination forms. We ascertained that all alums can get them
over the phone within minutes—at least in theory. We have included that
information at the entry point to our forms. Unfortunately, the process worked
for some alums but not others, for reasons unknown. We will continue to pursue
that matter.
Generating More Student Nominations
Student Committee members made the following suggestions for increasing
the number of future nominations: (1) use
technology as much as possible (e.g., FaceBook), (2) increase the publicity of
the award by running stories of the winners in The Review in February, rotating pictures of winners on UD’s home
page, putting ads in The Review, (3)
hold a “meet and greet” with students to meet the winners, and (4) use honor
groups and societies, whose members may be more likely to submit nominations.
Number of Nominations Received
The final number of submitted nominations was as follows. Note: For
everyone nominated in the current year, we add in the nominations they received
the year before.
|
|
# Nominees in 2008 |
# Nominations they received in 2008 |
# Nominations they had received in 2007 |
Total number reviewed for 2008 nominees |
|
Excellence in Teaching (faculty & graduate student) |
252 |
407 |
>157 |
564 |
|
Excellence in Advising |
81 |
95 |
>2 |
97 |
|
Note: System problems this year preclude a count of 2008 nominees’
nominations in 2007 |
||||
VI. Recipients of Excellence Awards
Excellence in Teaching, Faculty ($5,000
award)
Kenneth C Haas, Criminal Justice
Carolee A Polek, Nursing
Patricia Sloane-White, Anthropology
Julie K Waterhouse, Nursing
Excellence in Teaching, Graduate
Students ($1,500 award)
Michael A Anderson, Education
Stela K Stefanova, Economics
Excellence in Undergraduate Academic
Advising and Mentoring ($2,500 award)
Michell Provost-Craig, Health, Nutrition & Exercise Sciences
VII. Francis Alison Faculty Award
Clarified Submission Guidelines
for Dossiers
The Committee continued to revise its submission
form (“cover sheet”) to more clearly communicate to deans and chairs the kind
and format of evidence the Committee requires. A recent clarification was that outside
letters should communicate the candidates’ contributions in terms that
non-experts can appreciate. Lacking that, it is hard for Committee members to
properly compare contributions from different fields. In requiring the same
sorts of evidence in the same format, the cover sheet both communicates the
criteria for the award and levels the playing field for candidates. The quality
of dossiers for worthy candidates has improved considerably as a result.
Created Evaluation Rubric
The
Committee created an evaluation form (“rubric”) for member use in reviewing the
dossiers. It conforms to the scholarship and teaching criteria spelled out on
our website. The rubric helps Committee members be “on the same page” and implement
the criteria when evaluating dossiers. It will also serve to keep evaluation
criteria and procedures consistent from one year to the next.
Review of Submissions
The Committee evaluated the dossiers of four
candidates and selected ____, of____, as the 2008 recipient of the Francis
Alison Award.
VIII. Meeting Dates and Agenda Items for the 2008-2009
Year
Meeting dates
Meeting dates for the 2008-2009 term will be as follows:
Sept 19
Oct 10
Nov 7
Dec 5
Jan 9
Feb 13
Mar 13 & 20
Apr 17
May 8
Meetings will be on Friday mornings
from
Agenda Items
The following items should be on the agenda for the 2008–2009 year. These items are carryover items from the
current year:
1. Trimming the Honors Day Program Booklet
2. Soliciting more Excellence nominations from alumni
3. Soliciting more Excellence
nominations from matriculated students
4. Implementing the new
technology
IX. Committee Website
http://www.udel.edu/teachingawards