Each year, the College of Arts & Sciences honors some of our best educators with a range of teaching awards. These prizes are awarded annually to members of the CAS faculty who exemplify deep and broad commitment, skill, effectiveness, impact, and leadership in teaching. Use this nomination form to nominate a faculty member for one or more awards. Please submit all nominations by Friday, March 1, 2024.
Endowed Awards
- Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching
- Neu Family Award for Excellence in Teaching
- Frank and Lynn Wisneski Award for Excellence in Teaching
College and Dean’s Awards
- College of Arts & Sciences Award for Distinction in First Year Undergraduate Education
- Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education
- Dean’s Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching
Particularly, please draw your attention to the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching, which the College recently created to honor the fine part-time colleagues who contribute so much to the education of our students.
All nominations should be submitted via this nomination form by Friday, March 1, 2024.
Description and Criteria:
These awards are given annually to members of the CAS faculty who exemplify deep and broad skill, effectiveness, impact, and leadership in teaching.
Although success in the classroom is an important criterion of teaching excellence, these awards are meant to recognize and reward excellence in teaching in its broadest senses and in all of its aspects. Thus, faculty may be considered for these awards not just for their success in teaching scheduled courses but for their performance and accomplishments across the full range of pedagogical and curricular activities in which our faculty are engaged: directed studies of any sort, collaborative scholarship with students, teaching and learning activities connected with advising student organizations and other co-curricular activities, curriculum development, pedagogical innovation, mentoring of teaching fellows or other instructors, and so on.
Recipients of these awards will be recognized at a CAS Faculty Meeting and profiled in College publications and will receive a framed citation and monetary award. A number of past winners have gone on to win all-BU Metcalf awards and teaching prizes conferred by their regional and national professional organizations.
Eligibility:
College of Arts & Sciences professorial faculty and full-time lecturers at all ranks are eligible for Gitner, Neu Family, Frank and Lynne Wisneski, CAS Award for Distinction in First Year Undergraduate Education, and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education awards, regardless of their department or field. Nominees must have completed at least six semesters of full-time teaching in the College by the end of the current academic year.
College of Arts & Sciences part-time lecturers (including staff who teach on a part-time basis but excluding graduate students and full-time faculty who take on additional overbase assignments) are eligible for the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching. Nominees must have taught in the College of Arts & Sciences during the 2023-2024 academic year.
For a list of previous winners, please see this page.
Nomination and Selection Process:
Anyone holding a full-time or part-time faculty appointment in the College of Arts & Sciences during the 2023-2024 academic year may submit nominations for any of these awards. Nominators may nominate colleagues from any department or program (not just their own). Self-nominations will not be accepted for these awards. Co-sponsored nominations are welcome.
An individual may nominate up to one candidate for each category of award: an endowed award for distinguished or excellent teaching (i.e., Gitner, Neu, or Wisneski), Distinction in First Year Undergraduate Education, Excellence in Graduate Education, and Excellence in Part-Time Teaching. Nominations for an endowed award should not specify a particular award.
A separate letter should be submitted for each nominee. Each nomination should include a letter explaining in detail how the nominee exemplifies excellence in teaching, according to the selection criteria below.
A committee of CAS faculty who have been recognized for their own excellence in teaching will review nominations and advise me on the selection of this year’s awardees.
Selection Criteria:
The selection committee will base its recommendations on evidence of teaching excellence provided by nominees’ course evaluations and letters of nomination. The committee will consider not only whether nominees teach well but also the broader impact of their teaching as demonstrated by such evidence as increasing enrollments for their courses, teaching range, the design of new courses, and pedagogical innovations.
Letters of nomination are weighted heavily in this process. Better letters will not simply assert a nominee’s excellence but will provide evidence for it. Letters of nomination may present evidence of various types—including personal testimony, historical narrative, anecdote, reports of teaching observations, or quantitative data of different sorts—but they should be detailed and specific enough to allow the selection committee to independently assess a nominee’s teaching excellence.
Again, please use this nomination form to submit all nominations by Friday, March 1, 2024.