8.4 Board of Trustees’ Outstanding Faculty Award

The purpose of the award is to recognize a faculty member who has made a significant positive impact on student learning, with special emphasis on teaching outside the classroom and/or undergraduate research.  Any faculty member as defined in the Handbook who has been with Mines for a minimum of three years is eligible for nomination. The Awards Committee will consider the following factors:

  • Creative achievement, which contributes significantly to the breadth of the students’ classroom learning experience, for example: across-the curriculum teaching, teaching in multiple departments, or active learning applications.
  • Significant achievement made outside the classroom environment such as mentoring or other forms of student communication and encouragement and the active fostering of a learning community.
  • Developing and implementing practices that align with the state-of-art in higher education.

Nomination letters should be no more than two pages in length, and must include the following components:

  1. A statement briefly introducing the nominee and touching upon the nominee’s overall merits in the context of the Mines definition of effective teaching;
  2. a statement defining the significant creative achievements the candidate has made that contribute directly to the breadth of student classroom learning,
  3. a statement of activities related to achievements made in teaching outside the classroom, and
  4. a statement defining the practices that candidate has developed and implemented that align with the state-of-art in higher education.

Besides the materials above, all nomination materials must also include:

  • A short-form CV is required for the nominee (five pages or less) focusing on appropriate materials;
  • up to 5 letters of support from colleagues and/or students;
  • the faculty member receiving this nomination needs to have had satisfactory annual evaluations overall and in all applicable areas (Teaching, Scholarship and Service) related to the award over the last three years.  In addition, is not currently the subject to a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) or any grievance and therefore is eligible for a faculty award. The nomination packages must include a memo from the Department Head certifying that they are eligible. This memo will not count towards the total number of pages in the actual nomination;
  • any other supplemental materials deemed relevant.

The nomination package with all materials should be less than 20 pages total and submitted as a single pdf file.

This award is not intended to be given each year.

The award consists of a plaque, $2,000 deposited into a faculty member’s professional development account, and travel support to national engineering education conference for $1,000.

Last Revision:

October 1, 2024