Award Guidelines:
The William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching

Eligibility

All full-time Carnegie Mellon University faculty members who have demonstrated substantial devotion to the instruction of undergraduate and/or graduate students are eligible for nomination. No one person may win the award more than once or win the Ryan Award simultaneously with the Doherty Award or Academic Advising Award in one given year.

Administration

The Provost is responsible for the administration of the nomination and selection process, including calling for proposals and convening the committee.

The Ryan Award Committee

The Ryan Award committee consists of:

• the three most recent recipients of the Ryan Award
• three faculty members appointed by the Provost
• two undergraduate students and one graduate student selected through a process developed by the Dean of Student Affairs
• the Ryan Committee chairperson (the Associate Provost for Education, who is a non-voting member). If this person is unavailable, the Provost will appoint a senior faculty member who is not an administrator to act in the director's stead.

The Ryan Award committee adopts its own rules of procedure.

Nomination

Nominations may be made by any group of at least three persons, each of whom is either:

• a current or retired faculty or staff member
• a current or former full-time undergraduate or graduate student.

Proposals must include a letter [maximum two pages] addressed to the Ryan committee, in care of Dr. Susan Ambrose, Associate Provost for Education, Cyert Hall 127. The letter must be received by the committee on or before the first Monday in November, to be considered for that academic year.

The committee will select at least two and at most five persons each year to be considered for the award.

The proposers of each person so selected are then responsible, together with the relevant department head (or his or her designee) for preparing the full case for that nomination, following the guidelines. In the case of a department head nominee, the relevant dean should be included in preparation of the full package.

Twelve copies of each fully documented nomination must be submitted on or before the first Monday in February.

To Nominators Assembling Ryan Award Packages:

In an effort to help nominators put together packages that truly reflect the effectiveness, dedication and passion of their candidates, the Ryan committee has brainstormed over the years about what "winning packages" often have in common. Each winning package showcases the uniqueness that honors and reflects the individuality of the candidate.

Below are common items included in packages that, when presented together, concretely help the committee to understand the candidate's impact as a teacher:

• a nomination letter that provides descriptions of the instructor's outstanding teaching and/or innovations, whether they are classroom techniques, assignments, projects, course structure, educational materials, etc.
• a teaching statement from the candidate that indicates, in the nominee’s own words, what he/she does as an educator and why (some nominators recycle educational statements from other venues so as to keep the nomination confidential)
• samples of innovations, e.g., assignments and/or teaching methods that are annotated to explain the nature of the innovation (2-4 examples); students' projects, whether poems, pictures of projects, essays, etc., again annotated to provide context (2-4 examples)
• samples of the instructor's feedback to students
• letters from alumni who attest to and describe the long-term impact the nominee has had on them
• letters from current students who can discuss how and why the nominee impacted them:
  • letters from non-majors, if appropriate, are always compelling
  • letters from graduate students that focus on the nominee’s teaching and/or mentoring
• letters from colleagues who have first-hand knowledge of the candidate's teaching (e.g., team teaching, direct observation) and/or interactions with students, including colleagues' perceptions of the candidate based on their interaction with the candidate's students (simultaneously or subsequently) and/or from colleagues who can comment on the candidate's role in departmental or college curriculum changes/conversations, situating the candidate in a larger educational context, if possible
• letters from teaching assistants who attest to the candidates' impact on their development as teachers
• Faculty Course Evaluations for all courses in at least the preceding five years; they can be supplemented with information on the number of students enrolled in each course and whether the students were majors or non-majors
• brief C.V. (2-4 pages)

PLEASE NOTE that the maximum number of letters allowed is 30.

Please feel free to contact the co-chairs of the Ryan committee before or while you are assembling the package.

Selection

The committee will choose one person to be recommended to the Provost to be the recipient of that year's Ryan Award. Upon the committee's recommendation and the Provost's approval, the winner will be notified in late February, and the award presented at a public ceremony open to the entire university community in late spring.