Outstanding Professional Service and Community Engagement Award

The award recognizes Sustained excellence in professional service within the university through departmental, college, and institutional service or leadership; a record of substantial external service in local, state, regional, national, or international communities either in professional disciplinary endeavors or in the multiple forms that community engagement can take (including teaching and scholarship); or a combination of internal and external service and leadership.

Award Criteria

The candidate must demonstrate a significant contribution to the academic community through their professional service and/or community engagement activities. There should be substantial evidence that a nominee's professional service activities and/or community engagement activities have had a significant positive effect at the University and/or the community, regional, or national, or international levels.

The following are non-ranked examples of accomplishments that may be included as evidence:

  • Providing the benefits of their expertise to community organizations;

  • Making public professional appearances or performances;

  • Consulting with governmental agencies, business industries, educational systems, community service or arts organizations;

  • Serving on University committees and councils;

  • Participating in the recruitment and professional placement of students;

  • Serving as an officer or committee member in organizations related to the area of professional expertise;

  • Campus service at the department, college or university level;

  • Local community or contributions at the regional, state, national or international levels;

  • Discipline or disciplinary professional organizations and societies;

  • Leadership in local or system-wide faculty governance;

  • Leadership in developing community engagement;

  • Impact and significance of community engagement and collaboration for exchange of knowledge in a context of partnership and reciprocity should be evident at the University and/or community, regional, national, or international levels;

  • External awards and recognitions by local, national and international organizations for community engagement events;

  • Inclusion of community engagement work in instruction and/or course development and improvement;

  • Publication of community engagement activity results in professional and refereed journals, conference proceedings, textbooks, electronic journals, etc.;

  • Mentoring students in community engagement activities.

Eligibility

Any full-time teaching faculty is eligible to be nominated for the award. Administrators with faculty rank are ineligible for faculty awards (i.e., receives a Contract for Faculty Ranked Administrators). Previous award winners of this award (under any of its previous names) are not eligible to apply again. The award recipient must be under contract at KSU when the award is presented.

Award Amount

Each award consists of $5,000.

Number and Frequency of Awards

Up to one (1) award may be presented annually, selected based on the qualifications of nominees.

Nomination Procedures 

Each college is responsible for creating the process by which their nominees are chosen. College deans or their designees submit nominations. There are no limits on the number of nominees each college can submit. The selection committee can reactivate nominations submitted for 2 years after the original submission.

Nominations packets should include:

  • A completed Cover Sheet with signatures;

  • A 3-5 page summary statement by the nominee highlighting their achievements in professional service and community engagement and demonstration of the quality and significance of their outcomes. The summary must be created using 12-point Times New Roman font with one-inch margins;

  • A condensed curriculum vitae (2-3 pages);

  • A support letter from the nominee’s academic home chair; jointly appointed faculty may submit a joint letter from both chairs or two separate letters;

  • A maximum of three external letters in support of the nomination, in addition to the chair’s letter (please note KSU deans are not eligible to provide a letter);

  • Any other appendix materials useful to build the case;

  • All materials must be compiled into a single pdf document;

  • The packet must not exceed 20 pages. The Cover Sheet does not count toward the 20-page limit.

Evaluation Criteria and Procedures

The selection committee will look for originality, creativity and productivity and for an outstanding body of work that has generated significant impact and recognition at the institutional, local, regional, national, or international level. Factors to be considered will also include the scope of the work, degree of innovation and independent thought, and development of new practices. The committee will also evaluate the continued active involvement of the nominee and the promise of future accomplishments.

Nominations will be evaluated by a university committee including one member from each of the degree granting colleges, and the Executive Director for Faculty Development and Recognition.

Since members serving on this committee may not be experts in the nominee's field, it is important that nominations be submitted in language understandable to faculty in other disciplines.

Submission Procedure

To submit a nomination, the college dean or their representative should:

  1. Prepare each nomination application as a separate file, ensuring the correct cover page for the award is attached as the first page of the file.

  2. Click on the name of your college below to access the OneDrive folder where you will upload the nomination packet(s) for your college.
    (If access is denied, please contact CETL at cetl@kennesaw.edu or 470-578-6410.)

  3. Click on the Upload button at the top of the page in OneDrive to upload each nomination file.

The college dean and each nominee will receive a confirmation email for their nomination within the next business day.

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