Honors and Awards Committee

The Honors and Awards Committee (HAC) shall administer all honors and awards programs associated with, or involving the Department of Mechanical Engineering. These shall include honors granted or available to students, staff, faculty, and alumni. All committee decisions will be based upon a review of supporting documentation, followed by a simple majority vote.

Charge

1. Maintain the list of M.E. Department standing student awards normally presented at the Speed School honors and awards banquet. Make recommendations for the addition, deletion, or modification of standing awards, including award objectives, criteria, and description/citation language. Make recommendations for honoria/hardware associated with individual awards.
2. Recommend recipients for standing student awards. The committee may accept nominees, if permitted by the published award criteria. The committee’s recommendations must be approved by a majority vote of the M.E. faculty .
3. Work with the Pi Tau Sigma student chapter advisor and department Office Manager to identify students eligible for Pi Tau Sigma membership invitations.
4. Identify candidates for the department’s Professional Award In Engineering, given at homecoming to a department alumnus. The committee is encouraged to work with M.E. faculty, the development office, the dean’s office, alumni organizations, and other groups to identify deserving candidates. The committee may recommend only one candidate to the faculty, who must then approve the candidate by a majority vote. Alternatively, the committee may recommend two candidates, in which case the final department nominee must receive a majority vote.
5. Make recommendations for undergraduate scholarship recipients.
6. Whenever appropriate, make formal recommendations to the department chair for optional chair-initiated award nominations. Examples of such opportunities may include school-wide, university-wide, or national awards for faculty teaching, scholarship or service. While not required to act on such a recommendation, the department chair shall respond in writing to the HAC chair justifying a decision not to follow a nomination recommendation. Examples of such justification might include a belief on the part of the chair that the subject does not satisfy award criteria, evidence that the faculty as a whole do not support a nomination, the availability of a better-qualified candidate, or a subject who is personally opposed to the nomination. While not required to act, he chair is encouraged to place great weight on HAC-initiated nomination requests.
7. Make recommendations for special, one-time departmental awards. Examples include career achievement awards for staff, faculty, or alumni of appreciation awards to department benefactors.
8. Act as needed on honors-related requests coming from the department chair. For example, the department chair may request HAC input in cases where there are multiple candidates for a chair-initiated nomination.

Scope of Authority

The HAC is the primary responsibility for discharging the Department's duty to recognize and honor persons or organizations affiliated with it, or contributing to its missions. Its scope of authority encompasses all honors/awards/nominations made on behalf of the department as a whole. It shall not include recommendations for graduate assistantships or fellowships. Individual faculty are not required to consult the HAC prior to personal responses to open nomination solicitations. Faculty advisors to student organizations may make nominations for organization-related student awards without consulting the HAC.

Membership

The membership of the Honors and Awards Committee will consist of three (3) voting members of the Mechanical Engineering faculty, nominated and selected in accordance with standard election procedures. No more than two members will come from a single faculty rank or curriculum stem (thermal-fluid sciences/solid mechanics). Members will serve three (3) year staggered terms, with one term expiring each year in August. The HAC Chair will be appointed by the Department Chair from among the committee membership, and will serve in the position at the Department Chair’s discretion. The PAC Chair must be tenured, and will serve as the Department’s representative to school-wide and university-wide functions involving honors and awards.

Notes

1. Approved by the Mechanical Engineering Faculty, 7/31/03
2. Faculty ballots will normally occur during scheduled faculty meetings, with the Honors and Awards Committee business included as an agenda item. A “majority vote” shall be interpreted to constitute a majority vote of the voting faculty attending the meeting, provided a quorum is present. Under certain circumstances (pressing deadline), the department chair, with the concurrence of the H&A Committee chair, may conduct a mail/email ballot to establish faculty approval. Under these circumstances, the faculty shall be provided supporting documentation, and ballot results shall be tabulated by the department Unit Business Manager.