Faculty Mentorship Award

The awards committee has created a new annual award, which will recognize an outstanding faculty member in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience. A new subcommittee has also been created which will review the nominations. The subcommittee is made up of five graduate students, one from each year. At the Spring Retreat, the award will be presented to a faculty member who has shown outstanding work in teaching, mentoring, and committee service.

The process of nomination is as follows. To nominate a faculty member, send an email to Jon Waataja at waat0006@umn.edu by December 5th.

Faculty members who receive two or more of these email nominations will be eligible to win the award. To evaluate the candidates, I will solicit letters of recommendation from those persons who provided the original nominations. The recommendation letter should include how the faculty member has contributed to the program through teaching courses, mentoring graduate students, and committee work.

There are two rules for award eligibility. First, DGSs and department heads will not be eligible. Since DGSs and department heads already put so much time and energy into the program, it would be unfair for other faculty to be compared to them. Second, a faculty member cannot win the award in two consecutive years.

The winner will have his/her name displayed on a plaque and given a coffee mug or a small plaque that can be displayed in their office. I know that there are many faculty members that have put in a lot of time and hard work to make this an outstanding program. So please give this award some serious time and thought.

Thanks,

Jon Waataja

Committee chair

AWARD RECIPIENTS

2007 - Virginia Seybold, Ph.D.

2006 - Paul Mermelstein, Ph.D.

2005 - George Wilcox, Ph.D.

2004 - Christopher N. Honda, Ph.D.