UB Exceptional Scholars Guidelines

Criteria

The work individually and collectively, must have garnered public and/or professional accolades beyond the norm for other bodies of work in the identified genre (e.g., citation analysis, critical reviews signifying the work is of enduring importance, completion of the work under auspices of a highly prestigious fellowship or grant).
This award is for a body of work completed over a number of years. The award is not intended as a lifetime achievement award, but rather as recognition for outstanding performance in a recent segment of a scholar's career.

The work must have garnered public and/or professional accolades beyond the norm for other bodies of work in the identified genre. Evidence of such acclaim for a single piece of scholarship would include, but not be limited to, first or acknowledged primary authorship of a lead article in a recognized top journal (hereafter referred to as tier one) for the scholar's area, publication or performance of a work that is universally acclaimed, or completion of the work under the auspices of a highly prestigious fellowship grant. Evidence of exceptional scholarship could also come from a sustained record of tier one publications or other scholarly/artistic endeavors over a two to three year period.

No individual may receive a Young Investigator Award more than once.
No body of work may be used multiple times for multiple awards.
No individual holding a Distinguished rank is eligible for the Sustained Achievement award.

Each operating unit will maintain a web-based historical record indicating the annual recipients of each award.
Following the President's selection of recipients, the Office of Faculty Affairs will forward to you printed certificates signed by both the President and the Provost, accompanied by a personal letter of congratulations from the Senior Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs to be distributed as appropriate to your unit's own recognition practices.

Heads of decanal units or their designees will make nominations and provide supporting documentation (outside letters are strongly encouraged, but not mandatory, as part of the documentation process). Dossiers should include, as indicated above, a detailed letter of recommendation from the Dean, as well as any supporting documentation appropriate to support the nomination and a copy of the candidate's current CV.
Units may nominate recipients in proportion to the size of their decanal unit (one nominee permitted for each award category per 50 or less full-time faculty, up to a maximum of three per category).
Dean's offices should submit each nomination as a single copy in PDF format to the Office of Faculty Affairs at facultyaffairs@buffalo.edu.
The sensitivities inherent in these programs and the nature of the supporting documentation make it imperative that all deliberations, communications and actions of the campus committee remain strictly confidential. Ideally, this should extend to the identity of those selected by the department and/or decanal committee as the campus' nominees for these honors.
In making your nominations, please consider the need for disciplinary diversity and balance, as well as gender and racial diversity so that the composition of our honorees reflects the full range of faculty perspectives across the university.

Nominations will be reviewed by the UB Internal Awards Committee and make their recommendations to the Provost and President.