Distinguished Graduate Mentor Awards
The Graduate School invites nominations for the 2024 Distinguished Graduate Mentor Awards. Three 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 and will be recognized at A Celebration of Graduate Excellence. The nomination deadline is April 18, 2024. Please read below for further details.
Criteria
This award emphasizes the vital educational role faculty play in teaching and advising graduate students outside 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. We especially encourage nominators to discuss how their nominee has contributed to the growth of students beyond their own advisees. Past recipients of this award have been recognized for their accomplishments in one or more of the areas noted below. We list them here only to provide inspiration for faculty who are considering writing nomination letters for themselves or colleagues, not to indicate a finite group of mentoring contributions that will be considered in reviewing nominations:
- Extraordinary service on dissertation or thesis committees
- Increasing diversity and inclusion
- Job market preparation
- Facilitating publication
- Enhancing teaching or presentation skills
- Enhancing networking opportunities
- Positioning students for internships or awards
- Promoting public engagement or outreach
- Stimulating intellectual development
- Community building
Nomination Process
Any member of the graduate faculty may nominate themselves or another graduate faculty member for this award. Self-nominations are permitted. Letters submitted by multiple faculty members in recognition of a single faculty nominee are especially welcome. Nominations made directly by graduate students will not be accepted.
Nomination materials should consist of the following:
- A letter from the faculty nominator, not exceeding two pages, explaining why the nominee is deserving of the award.
- Three supporting letters, not exceeding two pages each, from current or former graduate students. Each supporting 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. Ideally, one of the letters will come from someone who is not the nominee's primary advisee, but this is not required. The Graduate School will not solicit these letters; they must be included in the nomination submission.
Nomination materials must be received by April 18, 2024.
Please submit materials by emailing grad-communications [at] grad [dot] umass [dot] edu (grad-communications[at]grad[dot]umass[dot]edu). Supporting letters may be sent separately from or together with the nominating letter.
Re-nomination of prior nominees is encouraged, and reuse of existing nomination materials is permitted. We do, however, strongly advise faculty who are resubmitting nominations to look critically at their nomination materials and revise them strategically.
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 (grad-communications[at]grad[dot]umass[dot]edu).