Faculty Senate Honors and Awards Committee Minutes

January 12, 2007

 

Rhonda Hyde called the meeting to order at 8:45 a.m.  Members Present:  Rhonda Hyde, chair, Katharine Kerrane, Jonathan Urick, Bob Davis, Diane Wright, Heidi Kaufman, Linda Gottfredson, and Mohsen Badiey.

 

Linda Gottfredson, the committee’s advisor, was welcomed back to the committee and introduced to the new members.

 

The minutes from the December 8th meeting were approved.

 

Rhonda asked that members check their access to the committee’s secure web site.  Linda said she will add new members to the list.  Jon mentioned that the membership page on the web site needs to be updated.  Rhonda will ask Karren Helsel-Spry to update that page.

 

Rhonda mentioned that Linda will be chairing the meetings in March since Rhonda is chairing a professional conference that month.

 

The Committee reviewed several new awards for inclusion in the Honors Day booklet.  The Frances M. Cahn Memorial Nursing Award and the Jeanne K. Buxbaum Honors Day Scholarship were approved for inclusion in the booklet.  The Dean’s Award for Outstanding Service did not meet the criteria.  Two College of Health Sciences awards, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research and The Visiting Committee Award for Excellence in Research do not meet the criteria for inclusion in the Honors booklet either.  Rhonda will contact Randee Tobin and discuss the criteria with her.  The criteria for inclusion in the booklet are:

 

  1. The award must be a minimum of $1,000 with a commitment to give the award for at least 5 years.
  2. Or, the award is an endowed award for at least $25,000
  3. Or, the award has historically been listed in the Honors Day Booklet
  4. All recipients of the awards must have a minimum of a 3.0 gpa
  5. With the exception of the Excellence in Advising and Excellence in Teaching Awards, recipients of the awards included in the booklet will be students.

 

The committee reviewed the wording of the questions in the excellence in teaching nomination forms, and approved the new wording:

Question #1:  New wording:  Illustrate the intellectual demands and rigor of this instructor by providing examples.

Question #2:  No change

Question #3:  New wording:  Use examples to illustrate this instructor’s skill in communicating with students and facilitating understanding of course content.

Question #4:  In what ways has this instructor had a positive and lasting impact on students?

Question #5:  No change

 

 

 

Question #6:  To help us reach more people, please indicate what prompted you to make this nomination.  Check ALL that apply.

‚                   Your personal experience with the nominee,

‚                   The encouragement or experience of a student,

‚                   The encouragement of faculty or administrators,

‚                   A request from the nominee to nominate himself/herself,

‚                   A request by email,

‚                   Facebook advertisement or facebook link,

‚                   Another online advertisement or web link,

‚                   Other: please specify ___________________________________

 

Added Question: 

Please provide any suggestions below for improving the nomination process.

 

Linda mentioned that question #6 will require some programming changes and she will talk with the IT consultant about that.

 

Jon reported that he met with Cynthia Cummings about advertising on Facebook.  Cynthia said UD’s primary concern about Facebook is students’ safety and she doesn’t foresee any problems advertising the nomination process on Facebook.  She was planning to discuss the matter with the Provost and President.

 

Jon said the committee could advertise through Facebook student groups for free, but he recommended buying a banner ad.  10,000 views per day would be $5 per day.  After discussion, the committee decided to run the ad for 20,000 views at $10 per day and run the ad twice, once the week of Feb 3rd and again the last week of Feb before the nomination deadline on March 1st.  Jon was going to investigate when the ad would need to be submitted and if there are templates that we could use in designing the ad.

 

Rhonda asked how alumni could go on the site to nominate candidates.  Do alumni have to go online and set up an email account?  If so that could be a barrier to them nominating candidates.  Bob said he would investigate a way to make the nomination forms available via the web.  Paper nominations are no longer available.

Heidi proposed that the nomination web link might be placed on the online course evals asking students to nominate professors they had particularly liked.  There was some discussion—the nomination forms could become a dumping ground for disgruntled students, and Diane expressed concern about the appropriateness of linking the course evals with the nomination forms.  After discussion, the committee decided not to pursue that idea further.

 

Diane asked if the committee would like a group of MIS students to review the online forms and procedures.  Linda was not sure there was enough work to give the students.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 10:30 a.m.

Submitted by Katharine C. Kerrane