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Gardner Award Nomination

Background

The Reed Gardner Award for Faculty Excellence was established in 2005 to acknowledge the contributions of faculty members to the Departments of Medical Informatics and Nursing Informatics at the University of Utah. The award was created by students to acknowledge the achievements of faculty members in the areas of teaching, mentoring, and service to the departments. The award is given annually after a competitive nomination and decision process supervised by a committee of students from the departments.

Selection Process

Nominations for this award are solicited in the spring semester of each academic year. Any student of the departments (except members of the selection committee) may submit a nomination by completing the nomination form. Nominations will be sought by advertising the award through department email, posting of flyers, and announcement at department seminars. Nominations will require submission of a brief nomination form which allows students to describe the faculty member’s contributions in the areas of teaching, mentoring, and service to the departments.

After the nomination period has closed, a committee of four students will meet to decide on the winner.  Candidates are contacted to confirm their interest in participating in the award and nominations reviewed by the selection committee.  The committee will pick a single winner each year based on the quality of the application and the faculty member’s contributions in teaching, mentoring, and, service.  A decision will be made by the end of the Spring semester and the award presented at the departmental event in the Spring semester.

Selection of Winner

The selection process is supervised by a committee of four students, who have completed at least one year in the M.S. or Ph.D. program.  The committee chair must be a member of the committee who served on the immediate prior year’s committee.  Other members of the committee are selected by the chair; the chair is encouraged to seek diverse students for the committee that represent the demographics of the department, the different research areas (i.e. bioinformatics, public health informatics, clinical information systems, and imaging informatics), and years in the program.  At least one member of the committee should be a Nursing Informatics student.  

The committee is encouraged to contact each nominee to solicit information about their participation in department activities such as faculty committees, research supervisory committees, the number of students they mentor, and courses they teach in the department. 

The committee should use the following criteria to evaluate the nominees:

  • Quality of nomination materials
  • Teaching
    • Does the faculty member regularly teach courses?  (Need not be full-time faculty.)
    • Does the faculty member demonstrate excellence in the classroom in the areas of lecturing, course design, or evaluation methodology?
    • Does the professor encourage contact outside the classroom?
    • Does the faculty member stimulate interest in the topic area?
    • Does the faculty member demonstrate enthusiasm for the topic area? 
  • Research Mentoring
    • Does the faculty member mentor many students as either a primary research supervisor or member of supervisory committee?
    • Do many of the faculty member’s students graduate?
    • Do many of the faculty member’s students publish work with the faculty member?
    • Does the faculty member provide guidance to their students in the development of research ideas, methodology, and publication? 
  • Service to the Department
    • Does the faculty member serve on faculty committees ‘beyond the call of duty’ – e.g. admissions committee? 
    • Does the faculty member make special efforts to serve the department beyond formal committees? 
    • Has the faculty member been a long-standing member of the department with a history of service?

A single winner will be selected each year by a consensus process of the committee.  A faculty member may only receive the award once every five years.  The award is not required to be given each year, if there are no nominations or the committee decides it would be inappropriate to give the award.

Reed M. Gardner Award for Faculty Excellence Nomination Form

Background:  The Reed M. Gardner Award for Faculty Excellence was established in 2005 to acknowledge the contributions of faculty members to the Departments of Medical Informatics and Nursing Informatics at the University of Utah.  The award was created by students to acknowledge the achievements of faculty members in the areas of teaching, mentoring, and service to the departments.  The award is given annually after a competitive nomination and decision process supervised by a committee of students from the departments. 

Instructions:  Please complete this form to the best of your ability.  You do not need to fill out each field, but please provide as much information as possible in those fields you do fill out.  This instruction sheet and form has two pages.  Keep in mind that the quality of the nomination materials is an element that the committee considers when picking a winner.   Please submit form to joann.thompson@hsc.utah.edu.  Thank you for participating!