ECU Academic Awards Committee
Annual Report: Academic Year 2003-2004
A major activity of our first few meetings was the preparation of a Proposed New Faculty Senate Resolution, to replace Faculty Senate Resolution #01-35 governing nomination and selection Procedures for the Annual Lifetime and Five-Year University Awards for Research and Creative Activity.
The protocols defined by the #01-35 resolution defined nomination pools for the Research and Creative Activity awards by ‘code units’. Because ‘code units’ vary substantially in numbers of faculty members, individual prospects for nomination varied greatly in inverse proportion to the size of the code unit to which each faculty member belonged. By changing the definition of nomination pools to academic units (which will in general be departments), and including the option of self-nomination, we were able to make individual prospects for nomination more uniform, without reason to expect any dilution of quality.
Our draft resolution was submitted to the faculty senate, where it was approved without amendment or modification and forwarded for the Chancellor’s approval, which was directly forthcoming.
For the University Awards for Excellence in Teaching and the Robert Jones Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, a subcommittee chaired by Professor Edmund Stellwag evaluated eighteen nominee portfolios and videotapes for the top twelve nominees.
The subcommittee discussed the adequacy and accuracy of the available scoring recommendations for those awards, without immediate issue. We remain vaguely dissatisfied with every effort to quantify the process that we have seen or imagined, but we are unwilling to move much further in any similar direction. Given the diversity of subject matter, teaching methods, styles and approaches, it is simply impossible to quantify in any uniform way the great range of ways that our colleagues excel in teaching. In fact, we truly hope that will continue to be true. In spite of the insecurity we all feel in making evaluative decisions of these sorts, we continue to find very gratifying coherence in the results of our process. We are certain that our nominees, although as different as chalk and cheese in subject matter, methods and styles, deserve their awards.
A subcommittee chaired by Professor Linda Wolfe evaluated five nominee portfolios, with demo CDs, for the Max Ray Joyner award for Excellence in Service through Continuing Education and Distance Education. Unable to break a tie between two thoroughly outstanding candidates, we duplicated the award for this year.
A subcommittee chaired by Professor Lauriston King evaluated seven nominee portfolios for the Five-Year Achievement awards and four for the Lifetime Achievement awards for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.
Members of this committee also served on committees for the Board of Governors Awards for Distinguished Professor for Teaching and the Board of Governors’ Excellence in Teaching Awards.
In all cases, we were greatly pleased by the number and the range and the quality of the applications, and honored to serve the Faculty of East Carolina University in these ways.
Respectfully submitted, with great appreciation for the efforts of all involved,
Charles E Boklage
Committee Chair
