Scholar of the Year Award

To the UMass Dartmouth Community,

The Committee invites nominations for the 2020 Scholar of the Year Award. We encourage applications from all disciplines. The person winning the award will receive a stipend of $1,000. The Leo M. Sullivan Teacher and Scholar of the Year awards, along with the ESU Service Award, will be presented at the Faculty Federation Annual Banquet. While this is normally held at the end of the Fall semester, the covid-19 pandemic has required that the 2020 banquet be held at the end of the Spring semester in 2021.

Faculty and librarians can nominate any full-time, tenure-track or tenured faculty or librarian at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (self-nominations are not accepted). Only dues paying members of the Faculty Federation are eligible to receive this award.

The award recognizes a substantive body of work as well as exemplary scholarly/artistic achievement by an individual in his/her own discipline. The awardee must be of international or national repute. The primary basis for selection is an intellectual and/or artistic contribution to some field of inquiry within the last four years. The committee anticipates that the competition for this prestigious award will be rigorous. The committee will place more value on specifics than on general statements of praise. A copy of a former Scholar of the Year Award winner’s package is on file in the Faculty Federation Office.

Nominations and evaluations remain active for three years following the year of initial nomination (unless the candidate has won). Below is a description of the award criteria.

Please send all nominations and supporting materials to the Faculty Federation Office by email. Supporting letters should be addressed to the Scholar of the Year Committee, and be included in the nominee’s package.

Questions should be directed to Honggang Wang, Chair, Scholar of the Year Award  Committee at hwang1@umassd.edu. The deadline for the submission Monday, February 1, 2021. The Awards Committee will notify applicants of the award decision approximately 2 weeks from the deadline.

View the Scholar of the Year Award Committee members

Criteria for the award

UMass Faculty Federation Recognizes Creative Work, Knowledge, and Scholarship

1. General Eligibility
   Full-time faculty and librarians.
2. Accomplishment(s) to be recognized.
   1. The committee recommends that the award be given for recent scholarship or a substantive body of creativework, accessible to a national scholarly audience in the individual’s own discipline. A general history of moreor less notable activities will not be considered an appropriate submission.
   2. While success in obtaining funding will be considered,the committee will take into account the impact of research in UMD programs and the respective field atlarge.
   3. Eligible work should not be limited to theory-based research and publications but may include compositions and artistic works. In short, any academically related scholarly product will be eligible for submission. However, the work should haves someone physical representation, as opposed to a purely mental construct or unrecorded activities orpresentations.
   4. The scholarly work should have been done, in themain, while in residency at UMD and must have been completed within the four-year period immediately preceding the year the award is presented.
   5. The supporting material, in hard copy or electronic format, can be submitted with the application package if the nominee feels that it is helpful.
3. Nominations
   1. Candidates may be nominated by any member of their college or school. The nominator should write a concise letter of no more than 3 pages.
   2. The nominee should provide a one-page summary overview of his/her scholarship or body of work and its impact on the field
   3. The nominee should include two evaluation letters from external peer reviewers from past promotion/tenure. These evaluators should be scholars in the nominee’s discipline and identify their own involvement and position in the field. In the case of librarians, the evaluation letters should be from scholars in the fields of librarianship and information science. Evaluators must offer a judgment of the scope, reputation, and influence of scholarship of the nominee.
   4. In summary, a complete nomination package should contain the following:
      • One internal nomination letter (no more than three pages)
      • One-page summary overview of scholarship and the impact on the field with names of the evaluators and their importance in the field.
      • Curriculum vitae (no more than five pages)
      • For faculty, two letters from external peer reviewers from past promotion/tenure.
      • For librarians, two evaluation letters from external scholars in the fields of librarianship and information science.
      • One-page summary of supporting material.
      • Optional: Copies of supporting material (books, articles,creative works) to Faculty Federation Office or in digital format via email (see below).

Packages should be submitted in one compiled PDF,including the internal nomination letter and evaluators’letters with the nominee’s name as title by Monday,February 1, 2021. Send PDFs to the Scholar of theYear Committee, c/o Stacey Alzaibak,