Guidelines for Nomination

Nominations must originate from individuals holding faculty rank at Elon University and be supported through letters of recommendation by colleagues qualified to judge the candidate’s work.

General criteria include:

• The nominee is a full-time member of the Elon University faculty.
• The nominee has not previously won the Distinguished Scholar Award from Elon University.
• The nominee has made an original contribution to their field.
• The nominee’s contribution has been exposed to critical appraisal by professional peers through publication, exhibition, and/or personal presentations.
• The nominee has shown evidence that their creative activity has been prolonged and is ongoing. One indication of this would be a record of publications, presentations, artistic performances, and/or exhibitions spanning a period of time including the present or recent past.
• The nominee must have completed a significant amount of scholarly work during their affiliation with Elon. Scholarly activities completed prior to joining Elon may serve to strengthen a potential recipient’s nomination.
• As this award recognizes sustained excellence in scholarly contributions, preference ordinarily will be given to candidates with 7+ years of scholarly activity at Elon.
• During the fall semester, the Chair of the Distinguished Scholar Award Selection Committee will solicit nominations from the faculty. Members of the Distinguished Scholar Selection Committee are not eligible for nomination.
• During the spring semester, nominees will submit a portfolio in support of their candidacy to the Chair of the Distinguished Scholar Award Selection Committee. This portfolio will contain their department's statement of scholarship, their curriculum vitae, a summary of their scholarship-related accomplishments, samples of published works, and recommendation letters. It is the nominee's responsibility to demonstrate their scholarship's impact on both the Elon community and the larger community of their discipline.
• Nominees will solicit at least four, no more than eight, letters of recommendation in support of their scholarship from colleagues qualified to judge their work. At least one of the letters must come from a colleague of faculty rank employed by Elon and at least three from faculty colleagues not employed by Elon University. Nominees who are applying again may use letters from the previous three years.