Rethinking Awards Processes

As an early-career faculty member, I assumed that academia was a meritocracy where deserving people were appropriately recognized for their efforts and accomplishments. That changed when I later became aware of strategies that some faculty used to garner nominations. In one case, a faculty member provided his department chair with a list and a timeline of awards he wanted to be nominated for. In another case, a faculty member asked his graduate students to nominate him for an award. In both cases, my first reaction was one of surprise followed by a sense of injustice. (In the second case, I felt uncomfortable with how a mentor might exploit their relative power over current students.) As I spoke to colleagues with similar stories, I realized that in addition to good work, awards were often the product of strategic decision-making on the part of awardees.

So, it is not surprising to read articles like this one, which shares the results of a study showing that women are less likely to win national awards for their scholarship in psychology than men. The authors also found that while women are making gains in national awards, it is because they are earning more awards for teaching and service. The authors explain that gender bias in awards impacts scholarly disciplines because award winners gain legitimacy for their theories and methods. In other words, disparities in awards affect what gets studied in the future and who gets credit for their work.

One way to address these disparities is to teach people to play the game: to encourage women across races, people of color across genders and other people who have experienced marginalization to be more assertive and nominate themselves for awards and professional development opportunities. Indeed, I received such advice early in my career and I learned ways to promote myself. But unveiling the hidden curriculum of awards by asking women and others to fix the disparities is not enough to change how the system operates. Instead, I’d like to encourage us to fundamentally change the way we go about recognizing and rewarding faculty and staff accomplishments. The following are several strategies for rethinking awards and recognition processes.

• Conduct an intersectional data analysis of prior award winners. Take a deep dive into the history of awards within your unit, examining nomination and award patterns by gender, race, rank and other variables to determine whether and how bias might have played out in the past. Collaborate with others to co-create procedures and processes that can eliminate bias.
• Remove obstacles that bar entry to opportunities. Consider removing or revising elements of application processes that gatekeep qualified candidates. Some awards or professional development opportunities require supporting letters from department chairs, deans, provosts or presidents. Likewise, some prestigious societies require a nomination by a senior colleague who has won the award or title in the past. While these requirements offer an endorsement or verification of one’s qualifications, they can also exclude excellent candidates. For instance, because of rampant academic harassment and workplace bullying, I know colleagues who did not apply for awards or prestigious training opportunities for which they were eminently qualified because they believed an unsupportive or bullying leader would not endorse their candidacy. If an endorsement is needed from a leader or expert, allow the candidate to choose the recommender.
• Create multiple paths to nomination. Permitting self-nominations allows candidates to have some control over the process; however, it is not sufficient to rely solely on self-nominations. Because of gender and cultural norms, some excellent candidates will not appraise themselves as qualified enough for a given award. Some may also experience discomfort nominating themselves, especially in units in which they have experienced exclusion and marginalization because of race, gender, area of scholarship and other factors. In addition to self-nominations, consider peer nominations so that people can ask to be nominated by others at a similar rank.

• Regularly nominate members of your unit. If you are a senior leader or department chair, regularly nominate members of your department every year for awards outside your department. Ensure that you are not simply nominating the same people each time. Not only will faculty and staff feel appreciated and seen by your efforts, but your regular nominations also put your unit on the map and increase the likelihood of awards. When leaders wait to make a nomination for those special cases they deem exceptional, they may cause their colleagues to miss an opportunity to be recognized for their work.
• Increase awareness of bias in selection committees. In one committee I led, we began our work together by reading several articles about gender bias in federal grant funding and in national recognition. Simply raising awareness opened up the conversation and led to a more objective analysis of applications and nominations.
• Create and use awards rubrics. In this same committee, we used our awareness of bias to step back and consider the skills, accomplishments and impacts we wanted to recognize. We then constructed rubrics to assess these criteria. That year, we had a noticeable shift in the demographics of award winners without sacrificing quality.

• Develop a transparent timeline and process. Invite input to create a transparent process and timeline for awards. Share processes and timelines with everyone on a regular basis so newcomers are not excluded.
• Be prepared for difficult conversations. Remember the examples I described at the beginning of this essay? People who have followed the hidden curriculum of nominations may not be happy about these changes. They may feel like systemic changes are disadvantaging their career progression or unfairly punishing them for knowledge they acquired about how to play the game of career advancement. Leaders can learn to be compassionate about the impact of these changes while they also provide a strong rationale for a more inclusive approach to recognition. It helps if leaders can also gain the support of their peers and upper-level administrative leaders who can reinforce the value of these changes, especially if they align with the institutional mission.

Advancing systemic change in awards and recognition processes can have immediate improvements on morale, especially for undervalued and overlooked colleagues who are doing groundbreaking work. And there may also be longer-term positive impacts. From experience, the benefits of local recognition and awards can compound over time, with department and university accolades paving the way for regional, national and international recognition, including leadership roles that have the potential to shape the future of the discipline and higher education. To be sure, the current system of nominations and selection is not necessarily resulting in unworthy recognition for those who win awards, but a more inclusive approach can ensure that others who are also worthy of recognition are getting a fair chance of receiving their flowers.