Assistant, associate and full professors are well-known academic rankings among Ohio University’s tenure-track faculty, but there is one designation meant to convey exceptional accomplishments in a given field — the Distinguished Professor award.
Last Friday, OU President Roderick McDavis sent an email to faculty requesting nominations for next year’s award recipient.
Nominations for the 2013 award recipient are due Feb. 15; nominees must have tenure and a minimum of five years teaching at OU, McDavis said.
The 2012 award winner will be announced at the commencement ceremony on May 3.
OU began awarding the title of Distinguished Professor in 1959. Typically, one award is given per year.
All the Distinguished Professors selected since 2005 are still working as faculty at OU and their average salary is $106,715.
Although there was a 2.5 percent raise pool for faculty members last year, the average salary raise for the seven current Distinguished Professors was only 2 percent. Raise pools provide enough money for each faculty member to receive the raise but leaves the final determination to individual colleges and departments.
“The amount of your raise as a faculty member could have been less than 2.5 percent, based on merit, or it could have been more than 2.5 percent,” said Ann Fidler, chief of staff for the provost and chief financial officer. “So it (depends on) whatever your merit evaluation — as established by your department or school — is.”
The award is often given toward the end of a professor’s career; so many of the awardees have retired since receiving their awards, McDavis said.
Charles Smith, professor of playwriting and head of the OU Professional Playwriting Program, received the Distinguished Professor award in 2010. He now heads the committee that screens nominations for the award.
Since the program began, 50 professors have been given the Distinguished Professor award. Of those, two are women. Smith was the first African-American professor to receive the award.
“We hope to be able to change (the lack of diversity), but if the applications aren’t there, we can’t just manufacture the applicant out of thin air,” Smith said. “We’re faced with some historical movements. For a long time, professors at universities were white males.”
Distinguished Professors receive several benefits — funded, in part, by the John C. Baker Fund. In addition to the lifetime designation of Distinguished Professor, the award winners get a continuing salary stipend — $5,000 for the first year and $2,500 for each subsequent year — travel support and a one-semester paid research leave, said Jennifer Kirksey, chief of staff to McDavis.
They may also choose one undergraduate student per year to receive a full-tuition scholarship.
“The thing I found as the most rewarding is the (opportunity to give out a) scholarship,” Smith said. “I was a little surprised about that — it’s the one thing I really did not pay much attention to in the process — but it’s been a really satisfying and fulfilling part of the award.”
bv111010@ohiou.edu
