The SUNY Chancellor’s Award Committee is still accepting nominations for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you know of a faculty or staff member who has performed beyond his or her responsibilities, whether it is making substantial contributions on committees or having a significant impact on students through teaching, here is an opportunity to nominate that person for this distinguished honor.
The Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are presented annually to faculty and staff in seven categories:
- Teaching — three (3) awards
- Faculty Service — one (1) award
- Librarianship — one (1) award
- Scholarship and Creative Activities — one (1) award
- Professional Service — three (3) awards
- Classified Service — one (1) award
SUNY allots awards to each campus based on enrollment. Each category has its own criteria as to how candidates are measured.
DEADLINES:
- Deadline for submitting nominating form for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching: September 30
- Deadline for submitting portfolio for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching portfolio: October 26
- Deadline for submitting nominations for Excellence in Teaching, Excellence in Faculty Service, Excellence in Professional Service, Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and Excellence in Librarianship: October 11
- Deadline for submitting portfolios for Excellence in Teaching, Excellence in Faculty Service, Excellence in Professional Service, Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and Excellence in Librarianship: November 26
- Deadline for submitting nomination/portfolio for Classified Service: TBD
CATEGORY DETAILS:
Teaching Award
For the teaching award, let the committee know, especially in your own statement, about your effectiveness in teaching. A couple of sample lesson plans or descriptions of some of your greatest lessons will be helpful. Let the committee know how you are keeping up in your field and in pedagogical practices (e.g. professional development you are undertaking). Support letters should reflect how your lessons/classes contribute to student success. Student letters are very important for this category, and again, should provide evidence of your impact on their learning. SUNY now requires evidence from student evaluations.
Faculty Service Award
When you are not in the classroom, what are your service contributions to your department, your colleagues, the college, and the students? How have you “made your mark” at Hudson Valley Community College? Support letters should focus on your impact in these areas.
Scholarship and Creative Activities
At Hudson Valley Community College, we have generally had nominees for creative activities such as art or publishing. For Creative Productivity (generally the fine or performing arts or those fields where creative productivity constitutes scholarship, e.g., culinary arts, etc.) SUNY requires a record of excellence in creative activity appropriate for the specific field or discipline, such as exhibitions, shows, performances, productions, and stage work, or a record demonstrating evidence of critical reviews, grants, inclusion of works in permanent collections, retrospectives, and other forms of external recognition and acclaim.
For scholarship (research in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities), SUNY seeks “an excellent, sustained record of research publications in peer-reviewed journals and/or research monographs, and/or research-oriented texts, or a record of presenting at national and/or international conferences, presentation of papers published in conference proceedings and/or digests, patents awarded, grants secured, and citation of work by individuals or groups other than the nominee’s collaborators.”
For Creative Productivity (fine arts or performing arts, areas in which creative productivity constitutes scholarship such as culinary arts), SUNY is looking for “a record of excellence in creative activity appropriate for the specific field or discipline, such as exhibitions, shows, performances, productions, and stage work; or a record demonstrating evidence of critical reviews, grants, inclusion of works in permanent collections, retrospectives, and other forms of external recognition and acclaim.”
Librarianship
How do you demonstrate skill in librarianship that is creative and innovative? Describe to the committee your service to the College and to the profession. How are you nurturing your own scholarship and continuing professional growth that allows you to work at the “over and above” capacity that the award requires?
Professional Service Award
Let the committee know how you go over and above in service to your department, your colleagues, the college, and the students. Support letters should reflect how impactful you are in these areas.
Classified Service
Similar to the professional service award, classified staff are recognized for going “over and above” the job description. Support letters should provide evidence that you really make a difference to the life of this college.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The following is language from SUNY: The sensitivities inherent in such recognition programs and the nature of the supporting documentation involved make it imperative that all deliberations of the campus committee remain strictly confidential. Because of the confidentiality of these proceedings, the Office of the Provost will interact only with the campus President, campus chief academic officer, or the President’s designee.
This means committee members are prohibited to discuss the process or answer questions, such as who is nominated, names forwarded to SUNY, or other information about the nominees.
PROCESS:
- Nomination
- Portfolio
- Review at three levels
- SUNY notifies (usually in later April)
- Hudson Valley Community College announces successful candidates
- Faculty/Staff Honor Ceremony
YOUR ROLE:
- You know your nominee well and what nominee does that is over and above.
- You are committing to an active role in helping your nominee with packet.
- Limit nominees to one or two
- As the nominator, you are demonstrating great faith that your nominee is deserving of this special recognition. It’s up to you to preserve the integrity of your nomination and the dignity of your candidate by actively supporting the nominee as she/he goes about gathering documentary evidence to support your claim.
You are committing to seeing your nomination through to fruition. That means you will:
- nominate someone who has been in title for a sufficient time. (Varies; committee verifies with HR.)
- be fairly certain nominee’s direct supervisor will support this effort. (The committee checks with the supervisor before a nomination goes anywhere at all. If the supervisor cannot support a nominee, then the process stops.)
- be sure you are nominating someone for the correct category.
- be ready to substantiate with solid evidence that your nominee has a sustained record of going “over and above” what is required by nominee’s job title.
- assist nominee in obtaining letters of support (see each category for helpful ideas). Nominees are sometimes reluctant to request such letters.
- limit the number of nominations you make per year to one or two. (That’s plenty of support work for a nominator to commit to.)
- avoid nominating people who will be “in competition” with each other. If you nominate two, make sure they are in different categories.
It is critical that you are certain of your own knowledge of the requirements of your nominee’s job and that your nominee is, indeed, exceeding requirements. If you are ready to nominate, please email SUNY Chancellor’s Award Committee chair Tony Podlaski (a.podlaski@hvcc.edu) to request a nomination form.
UPCOMING STEPS:
Portfolio
In general, each nominee will be required to provide:
- A resume or CV
- A statement describing what nominee does that is well beyond what can be expected per job requirements
- Supplementary documents that demonstrate the quality of nominee’s work
- A job description (so the committee understands what’s bottom-line and what is over and above)
- Nominator’s letter
- Supervisor’s letter
- Letters of support
The nominator and nominee will work together to create a complete portfolio that will be forwarded to the Chancellor’s Award Committee Chair by the deadline. This packet needs to be submitted as electronic files, either Microsoft Word or PDF. Depending on the size of the file, nominees might use OneDrive or upload the file to a thumb drive, which will be returned. No paper copies, binders, plastic covers, or other hard copy options can be accepted.
If you need help with scanning, there are Faculty Mentors in the Faculty Resource Room, as well as the Center for Professional Excellence. Portfolio files will be viewed by the committee through a OneDrive folder.
What happens next?
The files are reviewed at three levels: The file will be evaluated by the committee, and if evidence is substantial and meets SUNY guidelines, will be forwarded to the President’s office and, if approved at that level, will be forwarded to SUNY for approval by the Chancellor’s office.
SUNY Information
For Excellence in Adjunct Teaching: http://system.suny.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-staff-awards/excellence-in-adjunct-teaching/
For Excellence in Faculty Service, Librarianship, Professional Service, Scholarship and Creative Activities, and Teaching: http://system.suny.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-staff-awards/chancellors-excellence-awards/
For Excellence in Classified Service (subject to updating for 2024-2025): http://system.suny.edu/communitycolleges/classified-service-awards/
If you have any questions, please contact SUNY Chancellor’s Award Committee Chair Tony Podlaski (a.podlaski@hvcc.edu).