Distinguished Professorship

Distinguished Professorship

Eligibility

• Must have held rank of full professor for at least five years and must have one year of full-time service at the nominating institution.
• List of faculty eligible for Distinguished Ranks Awards (pdf)

Selection Criteria

• The person's work must be of such a character that the individual’s presence will elevate the standards of scholarship of colleagues both within and beyond the individual’s respective academic field.
• The individual must have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within the individual’s chosen field through significant contributions to the research literature or through artistic performance or the creative arts, beyond that which is expected of a full professor.
• The individual must have obtained national or international awards that provide evidence of distinguished research, scholarship, or other creative activity.
• Individuals who are also inventors should have achieved prominence as assessed by the extent their discoveries have had a measurable benefit to society.

Required Documentation

• CV: An up-to-date and moderately comprehensive vita that should have separate sections for educational background, academic/visiting appointments, honors and awards received, national academy memberships, publications, external funding, invited/keynote presentations, other presentations, teaching accomplishments (including lists of graduate dissertations, theses and research directed and other mentoring), and service contributions to the University, the community, and the profession (work with learned societies, editorial boards, conferences organized, and other relevant activities). Entries for awards should indicate significance of each item. Specific data must include the date of the last update, the candidate’s department, the date of appointment to the SUNY system, highest rank attained and date of appointment to that rank.
• Articles in refereed and non-refereed journals should be clearly distinguished from one another and, preferably, listed separately with full pagination and ordered by date of publication. Books should be listed separately from articles. Publications with multiple authors should indicate the senior author, if there is one, either by a note at the beginning of the publications list (if senior author position is consistent throughout) or by an asterisk indicating the senior author in each entry. External funding entries should indicate agency, amount, dates, and, if there are multiple named researchers, who is the principal investigator (PI). If available, citation information from Google Scholar or other sources should be provided.
• Internal Letters of Recommendation: At least five, but no more than eight, letters are needed, including one from the Provost (Chief Academic Officer) and one from the candidate’s Dean/Division Head that provide detailed information and the specific rationale – preferably in layman’s terms – for the candidate’s nomination. Letters from those holding Distinguished rank are encouraged.
• External Letters of Recommendation: At least five, but no more than eight, are needed to validate the stature of the candidate proposed for appointment. For DP, each external letter of recommendation should be accompanied either by the author’s full and current curriculum vita or a very detailed description of the author’s stature sufficient to provide review panelists a context for the recommendation submitted. These letters should be from individuals whose own status or accomplishment is appropriate to a promotion at this level. They should be persons sufficiently acquainted with both the candidate’s work and the profession to be able to write an informed letter specifically locating the candidate’s standing in and contribution to the discipline, and explaining the significance of the candidate’s awards and honors. Letter writers should be disinterested, that is, generally individuals who have not collaborated, co-authored, co-taught, or been in a student-teacher relationship with the candidate. If the letter writers have collaborated with the candidate in the past, they should pass the same distance test used by the major funding agencies in the candidate’s field: if the relationship is recent or close enough that the proposed letter writer would have to recuse himself/herself from a funding panel considering an application for that candidate, then the proposed letter writer is too recent or close for this promotion dossier.
• For additional information view this pdf.

Nomination Form for Chancellor's Awards