We describe the nomination process for the Weiss awards. If you have questions please consult this FAQ or contact us directly.
Nominations and Nominators
The call for nominations goes out in January. Students, faculty, and academic staff are asked to reply to weissawards@cornell.edu with the names of potential candidates and (if possible) a willingness to serve as the nominator.
The nominator is the individual who submits the dossier. A student who wishes to serve as a nominator is advised to contact the chair of the candidate’s academic unit. Because of the data-gathering work involved, the recommended arrangement is to have a departmental colleague of the nominee oversee the submission because that person can more readily tap into administrative support.
Previously declined nominations can be resubmitted.
The Dossier
The dossier consists of a single pdf file with a cover page, a table of contents and these six sections:
- Three letters from faculty with knowledge of the nominee’s skill in and outside the classroom. Letters that are put together and co-signed by groups that consist of faculty and academic support-service personnel are acceptable.
- Five letters from students (or former students) whom the nominee has taught or mentored as Cornell undergraduates. Letters that are put together and co-signed by groups of students are acceptable.
- A teaching statement from the nominee that highlights the most important contributions made to undergraduate education through teaching, mentoring, and related scholarly activity. (500 words or less)
- The nominee’s curriculum vita. It should include awards for teaching and other accomplishments that relate to undergraduate education.
- List of all courses taught at Cornell by the nominee during the past ten years. Include course number, title, semester taught, and approximate enrollment. Courses that were c0-taught should be so indicated.
- The following documentation must be provided for each undergraduate course taught at Cornell by the nominee during the past five years:
(a) Enough information to understand what the course is about and what was required of the student, e.g., weekly homework, papers, projects, portfolios, presentations, exams, etc. Detailed syllabi, copies of key assignment write-ups are acceptable as are links to webpages that are relevant to the nomination.
(b) All written comments that are part of the course evaluation process must be reported. If numerical scores are part of the evaluation, then it must be possible to get a sense of their value either through raw data or through summary statistics or both. The course evaluation response fraction must also be reported, e.g., “50/60” meaning that there were sixty students in the class and fifty submitted a course evaluation.
Important Dates
February 23, 2018
Recommended deadline for informing the nominee of the intent to nominate. This gives ample time for the nominee to produce the teaching statement and the CV. It also enables the nominee to help the nominator assemble the necessary course materials for the dossier. To facilitate the scheduling of the review process, nominators are kindly asked to communicate the name of the nominee to weissawards@cornell.edu once it is known
March 30, 2018
Deadline for submitting the completed dossier to weissawards@cornell.edu.
