Good evening,
This week's edition of C&EN contains an announcement soliciting nominations for the 2010 ACS Awards:
http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/86/i27/html/8627awards1.html
Some divisions within ACS annually send their division members a letter encouraging them to nominate deserving colleagues and organize the required letters. To my knowledge, the Division of Chemical Education does not send such a letter. However, there are at least two awards for which people on the CER listserv might wish to nominate colleagues:
ACS Award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching and Learning of Chemistry
George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education
During this past spring's meeting in New Orleans (where I organized the awards symposium for Dorothy Gabel), I was approached by several colleagues asking how the award process worked. I thought it appropriate, given those questions, and the announcement in this week's C&EN, to send some general reminders to the CER community.
First of all, some of the rules (see the ACS website for a complete list of procedures):
1. A nomination requires 3 letters: one nominating, plus two seconding
2. A person can write only one letter per award (you cannot support multiple nominations for the same award).
3. There is a selection committee for each award. Membership on this committee is to be secret, and members can neither be nominated nor write a letter for that particular award.
So, put your thinking cap on and decide whom you would like to nominate for these awards. Choosing to "not nominate" person X because there are already persons A, B, C... who are so much more deserving or more senior or more published or.... is not a good strategy for the longevity of these awards. If only the 4-6 people who would be at the top of everyone's list actually get nominated, ACS may form the opinion that this award is not worth continuing b/c there just aren't that many qualified candidates. Better to take the stand that person X should win someday and probably will someday. So - write your letter and get two others to support it. Then, just update it each year until person X wins. (Awards "pressure" is like "proposal pressure" - if funding agencies get too few proposals to an RFP, it often disappears in the next round of funding b/c clearly people just weren't "interested." We need to avoid this happening with chemistry education awards.)
This is not a process that can happen 'quietly' in order to surprise a nominee. You need the nominee's up to date and complete vita to write letters chock full of data. You'll need to email and call people to put together a team of 3 letter writers. Because of item #2 above, letter writers get committed early (or have been since last year and are re-submitting the same letter). So, you need to talk to people. Don't be shy. And, if you contact someone to ask if you can nominate them or to ask them to write a letter and they politely decline, please consider that they may be on the selection committee, but can't really tell you that.
I would like to note two personal points. First, someone told me it might look like I was trying to get myself nominated by sending an email like this. Nothing could be further from the truth. Secondly, this email is a set of personal remarks. Not everyone on the CER listserv will agree with them. In fact, some people in the CER community disagree with some of these ideas and have already told me so. Some people will consider me pretentious for presuming that people need to be told these things. I'm willing to take that risk. I just don't want to risk these awards fading away because some people think it's really "so and so's turn to win, and s/he is already nominated, so I don't need to do anything else." I want these awards to flourish and have ACS sit back on its heels and go, wow - look at all these really strong nominations!
I'm not an expert on these awards. I've only participated in nominating Dorothy last year, so I have just that one year's experience to go on. I wrote this email in hopes of spurring others on the list to "get in the game" and start writing letters. Nomination packages are due November 1. If you have questions, I'll try to answer them. If I don't know the answer or am not sure, I'll help you find someone who does know for sure.
Stacey
Stacey Lowery Bretz, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
Miami University
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
369 Hughes Lab
Oxford, OH 45056
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513-529-3731 (voice)
513-529-5715 (fax)
http://www.users.muohio.edu/bretzsl
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