8.6 Faculty Excellence Award

The purpose of the award is to recognize a full-time tenured or tenure-track Colorado School of Mines academic faculty member who has demonstrated, during the immediately preceding calendar years, significant and meritorious achievement in teaching and scholarship.  The following factors will be considered:

Teaching

  1. Unusual achievement that contributes significantly to the quality of the students' classroom learning experience.
  2. Application of high standards for both the rigor and currency of course content and for the level of student performance with respect to these standards.

Scholarship

  1. Publication of high-quality, original scholarly works in nationally recognized and externally refereed professional journals.
  2. The potential significance of these contributions to the enhancement of the effectiveness of subject content in the classroom.

Nominations should be created with input from faculty members, students, alumni and others who are knowledgeable of the Mines' community and the criteria for the award. 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 highlighting significant achievement in teaching by the criteria defined above, and
  3. a statement highlighting significant achievement in scholarship by the criteria defined above.

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.

The award consists of a plaque and $4,000 deposited into a faculty member’s professional development account.

Last Revision:

October 1, 2024