Citation Award Guidelines and Tips

Who Can Make Nominations 

  • All UMass Amherst employees and students are encouraged to submit a nomination on behalf of a staff member or staff team. 
  • Members of the UMass Amherst community can only submit one nomination per nominating period. 

Who Can Be Nominated

  • Nominated individuals: Employees should be either a GIC benefit eligible or non-exempt staff (01) member in an active employment status and working at least 50% of the time. 
  • Nominated teams: Teams should be well established over the course of the past year or longer and may be comprised of GIC benefit eligible exempt or non-exempt staff (01) members in an active employment status and working at least 50% of the time. 
  • Five Year Nomination: An individual recipient cannot receive an individual award again in a five-year period. Example: If someone is awarded the Citation Award in 2020, they are eligible to receive a nomination in 2025.
  • Multiple Employee Recognition Awards: Nominated employees or team members should not have received, nor be scheduled to receive, a cash award under a similar employee recognition program within the past year. Please check with your area HR department to see if the person you want to nominate has received a similar employee recognition award in 2024. Staff members can only receive one award per year. 
  • Payroll: Recipients must be on the payroll at the time of the award ceremony in order to receive the award. 
  • Staff Recipients: Faculty/MSP member are not eligible for this award since they have their own recognition programs. Only actively employed staff members are eligible for this award. 
  • Citation Committee Members: Citation Committee members are not eligible for this nomination, nor can they submit a nomination. To see who is on the Citation Committee, please go to the Citation Committee Member page. 
  • Senior Leaders: Members of the senior leadership (Vice Chancellors, Deans, and Associate Deans) are not eligible for nomination. 

Guideline and Helpful Tips 

  • Carefully review the award criteria prior to writing your nomination. 
  • The Citation Award Committee makes decisions based only on the information supplied in your nomination. When submitting your form, provide detailed examples of how the nominated staff member or staff team demonstrates exceptional performance. 
  • If you know of other UMass community members who have additional information to support your nomination of the same staff member or staff team, encourage them to also submit a nomination.

Supportive Summary Section

For the supportive summary section of the submission form, please keep it brief and include the following information.

  • Describe the nominee's outstanding achievements of the past year and provide as many details as possible. 
  • Use specific examples rather than general statements about the individual. 
  • Be descriptive as to why they deserve this nomination. 
  • Please provide examples of how they have gone above and beyond, and because of their outstanding contributions, they have had a positive impacted the UMass community.
  • When submitting a team nomination make sure to describe how each person contributes to the team's success.
  • Supportive summaries can be handwritten or typed in a narrative or bullet point format within the narrative section of the form or as an attachment. 
  • For online submission forms, we recommend writing your supportive summary in a Word document and then pasting the information onto the form. 

Supportive Materials

  • Your supportive information may include pictures or articles describing the nominee's contributions to the university. Please do not include a nominee's performance evaluation forms.  
  • If you submit the online form, you may attach additional supportive documents to the DocuSign form. 
  • For paper submission please attach your supportive documents to the form and bring your materials to the Employee Service Center in room 325, Whitmore Administration Building. 

2025 Submission Deadline 

All nomination materials must be submitted either online or delivered to the HR Employee Service Center 325 Whitmore Administration Building by 4 p.m. on Friday, December 20, 2024. 

If you have questions, please email citationawards [at] umass [dot] edu (citationawards[at]umass[dot]edu) for more information.