Distinguished Graduate Mentor Awards

The Graduate School invites nominations for the 2025 Distinguished Graduate Mentor Awards. Up to two recipients will be selected for this honor, which recognizes faculty members for the indispensable work they perform in guiding graduate students to academic and professional success. Awardees will receive a prize of $2,000. The nomination deadline is 5:00PM on Monday, February 10, 2025. Please read below for further details.         

This award recognizes graduate faculty for outstanding contributions to graduate student mentorship outside of the classroom.

We welcome nominations that detail how faculty members excel as graduate mentors, particularly by advancing the development of students as scientists, scholars, teachers, artists, or professionals.

Successful nomination packages provide evidence of a long-standing commitment to graduate student mentorship. Nominations that provide evidence of contributions to mentorship beyond the mentor's own advisees are especially valuable, but not required.

Past recipients of this award have been recognized for their accomplishments in one or more of the areas below. We list them here only to provide inspiration for nominators, not as a list of requirements. 

  • Instituting programmatic reforms
  • Outstanding service as GPD
  • Extraordinary service on dissertation or thesis committees 
  • Creating an inclusive environment that welcomes graduate students from diverse backgrounds
  • Preparing students for the job market
  • Facilitating publication 
  • Enhancing students' teaching or presentation skills
  • Increasing networking opportunities 
  • Positioning students for internships or awards 
  • Promoting public engagement or outreach
  • Stimulating intellectual development
  • Community building  

A nomination packet should consist of five letters, including:

  • Three from current or former graduate students: each letter should describe the nominee's strengths as a mentor and the impact this mentorship has had on the student's intellectual and professional development
  • One letter from a faculty member or department chair
  • A final letter from another faculty member, graduate student, or a staff member

All materials must be submitted as a single PDF. The Graduate School will not solicit letters. Please name the file Grad Mentor Award_Name of nominee.

We encourage re-nomination of prior nominees, and you can reuse existing nomination materials. We do, however, strongly advise nominators who are resubmitting nominations to look critically at their nomination materials and revise them strategically. 

Previous recipients of this award are ineligible. 

Award recipients will be chosen by a committee appointed by the Graduate School.
Questions about the nomination process or the Distinguished Graduate Mentor Awards more broadly should be directed to grad-communications [at] grad [dot] umass [dot] edu.