Faculty award nominations now done online

To encourage more participation in faculty honors programs and to make the process easier, administrators at the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies have moved to a Web-based nomination system.

The Rackham Graduate School fields nominations for multiple awards, including Distinguished University Professorships, Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards and John H. D'Arms Faculty Awards for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities.

"The University of Michigan employs some of the most talented faculty members in the nation," says Pat McCune, program manager at the Rackham Graduate School. "But without a conscientious effort on the part of nominators, our faculty's achievements can go unacknowledged."

The change to the online format will make the entire process faster and require less paperwork, McCune says. "A primary goal is to simplify the process."

A list of awards with criteria and deadlines for submission can be found at: http://www.rackham.umich.edu/Faculty/Funding.html.

McCune says she hopes the new system will lead to more nominations for particular awards, including University Undergraduate Teaching Awards, Margaret and Herman Sokol Faculty Award in the Sciences and Henry Russel Awards.

Rackham Dean and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs-Graduate Studies Janet Weiss is encouraging faculty to nominate deserving colleagues at each stage of their careers, McCune says. Review committees are interested in seeing nominations of women, minorities and members of other groups historically underrepresented in their disciplines, she adds.

Those who put together the nomination files will be pleasantly surprised by the ease of the new online format, McCune says. Nominators can enter required information in multiple steps and over a span of time. Once the nominator feels the form has been completed, it can be submitted. If a piece is missing, however, the site automatically will inform the nominator.

Under the old system McCune and her staff had to sort through paper nomination files, a task that took weeks. Often nominations were made, McCune says, but not all necessary paperwork was submitted or nominators sent in more than was required. The Web system will standardize the submission process, allowing for a more equitable mode of evaluation, she says.

Over the summer McCune asked more than 50 chairs, deans and administrations how she could make the submission process easier and more efficient. "I talked to my customers," she says.

Questions about the nomination system should be directed to McCune at (734) 647-2655 or faculty-awards@umich.edu.

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