Office of the Provost

Communications » Memos and Announcements

Dear UConn Faculty,

One of the highest honors that we bestow on our faculty is the title of Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. We are now seeking nominations for this honor to recognize UConn faculty who excel in research, teaching, and service.

We have revised our nomination process this year to broaden the diversity of nominees as well as to redistribute the effort involved in the nomination process. Previously, our procedure required all nominees to solicit external letters in their application materials. This year, we are splitting the process into two phases. In the initial phase, nominations will not include external letters. The committee will review the materials of initial phase nominees and invite a select group to advance as finalists, at which point external letters will be requested.

These changes have been driven by our selection committee, composed of academics and two student representatives. Each year, we can award only a limited number of professorships, typically three. It is possible that there are faculty who at present are not applying because the current packet of application materials requires them to solicit external letters. Faculty who have applied in recent years may have done so for several years and had no sense of whether they were close to the award, despite having solicited letters from external referees with a national and/or international reputation. The newly instituted changes are intended to help applicants understand if they have reached the finalists pool, as well as focus the effort of soliciting letters for the nominations most likely to advance in a given year.

I hope that with these changes we will be able to see the most diverse pool of applicants ever. I strongly encourage you to talk to colleagues whom you feel might meet the criteria of excellence in research, teaching, and service, and who have spent at least 10 years of their career at UConn.

The deadline for nomination materials in the first phase is Friday, November 25. More information is available on the Provost’s Office website. If you have questions about submitting materials, please reach out to amanda.pitts@uconn.edu.

After first-phase reviews, the committee will select a smaller pool of finalists, who will be notified by December 20. These finalists should then solicit letters of recommendation, including those from outside of UConn. Letters and any other materials requested for this pool of finalists will be due by February 19, 2021.

Candidates selected to receive the title of Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor will be awarded this distinction at the April meeting of the Board.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Publication date: 09/29/2020