Who can be nominated?

• Anyone teaching full-time for at least the last five consecutive years in any of the five Faculties at Ryerson and who, to the best of their knowledge, will be teaching at Ryerson for at least three more years, is eligible to be nominated for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction.
  • Note: if a sabbatical taken within that period of time, add one more year to the eligibility period.
  • Note: The Chang School instructors are not eligible for this award.
• No individual can be nominated for more than one University-wide teaching award in any given year. However, the University Teaching Awards Selection Committee (UTASC) reserves the right to reassign any nomination to a different category, based on the best fit with the evidence.
• The nomination is valid only for the year in which it is made.
• Any individual can receive the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction only once.
• By agreeing to be nominated, the nominee commits to cooperation with the nomination facilitator in providing supporting evidence. The nominee will also commit, if selected as the recipient, to attending the annual Faculty Teaching Awards Ceremony, to delivering a Convocation Address at a Convocation ceremony, and to a presentation, within one year of the receipt of the Award, as part of the Ryerson Teaching Award Recipients Series offered for the Ryerson community.
• At the time of nomination, the nominee will elect how they will receive the monetary award should they be successful in the competition. They can elect to receive it as a one-time payment in their RFA pay (subject to applicable deductions) or they can elect to have the amount credited to an LTO-based professional development fund (subject to existing professional development reimbursement fund guidelines and approvals).

• Any member of the Ryerson Community (faculty, student or staff) can nominate someone for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction.

The nomination file should clearly address the two Award Criteria as described below.

1. Significant Contributions over Time to Teaching and Learning at Ryerson and Sustained Educational Leadership
2. Continuing Teaching Excellence

While some of the criteria and examples listed above are similar to those for other Ryerson teaching awards, it is expected that the recipient would demonstrate a greater depth and breadth of his/her record, as appropriate for the prominence of the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction.

1. Obtain the nominee’s permission;
2. Prepare, in collaboration with the nominee, a two-page Brief (executive summary) of their accomplishments and contributions that meet the award criteria and eligibility.
3. NOTE: Since preparation of quality nominations for the Chancellor’s Award requires a large effort in collecting evidence and soliciting support (please see the respective Award Guidelines for details), it would be unreasonable to request the submission of complete nomination files at this stage of the process, hence only the two-page Brief is required.
4. Submit the Brief via the Online Nomination Portal by the specified deadline for consideration by the Faculty Awards Committee (FAC).
5. Once the FAC makes its selections/recommendations, the nominator compiles a Full Nomination file detailing the record of the nominee’s accomplishments. If submitted via the Online Nomination Portal by the due date (with the recommendation letter included), the nomination will then be seen by the University Awards Selection Committee (UTASC), which will select the award.
6. If the nominator is a student, he/she is encouraged to contact the FAC via the Dean's Office to get assistance from a faculty advisor with compiling the Brief and, should the nominee be selected as the Faculty candidate, with compiling the Full Nomination file. This is to ensure that the submission reflects a full range of the nominee's contributions that a student nominator may not be fully aware of.

• Each Faculty can only submit one candidate for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction. The Faculty candidate will be selected by the Faculty Awards Committee (FAC). The goal of the FAC is to help advance the University-wide Faculty Teaching Awards Program by ensuring that high quality candidates are identified and their nominations put forward to the Learning and Teaching Office (LTO), wherever a match exists between the candidate’s achievements and the criteria for a specific teaching award.
• Once the Faculty candidate is selected by the FAC, the Committee will request an endorsement letter from the Dean, to be included in the candidate’s Full Nomination file that is to be submitted online by the deadline. The FAC will also ensure that there is a nominator to work with the selected candidate on a Full Nomination - usually it would be the person who submitted the Brief. If the nominator is a student, the faculty advisor who helped with the Brief will continue to help with compiling the Full Nomination to ensure that the nomination reflects a full scope of the nominee’s activities that may be unknown to the student nominator

• The nomination package must not exceed a total of 35 pages. The required components of the nomination for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction are:
• A one-page endorsement letter written by the Dean;
• A Nomination Brief (1 to 4 pages) preparedby the nominator. The Nomination Brief should clearly address the nominee’s achievements according to each of the awards criteria. In essence, it should function as an executive summary, pointing to specific segments of the package;
• A Citation (no more than 300 words that fit onto a single page) suitable for public release, to be prepared by the nominator. Should the nominee be selected as the recipient, the citation will be printed in the special Awards issue of the LTO Exchange newsletter and read during the Faculty Teaching Awards Ceremony;
• A statement of the nominee’s Teaching Philosophy (1 to 3 pages). Such statement should show evidence of reflection on one’s practices as they relate to fostering student learning and their intellectual growth, to contributions to teaching and learning at Ryerson that transcend the Faculty and to possible contributions to teaching and learning outside Ryerson;
• A Summary of Teaching Evaluations (one page) over a minimum of five consecutive years – please do not submit copies of raw data, instead tabulate (or provide a graph of) the relevant information on a single page; more years included voluntarily in the summary will be considered a plus;
• A modified Curriculum Vitae (1 to 4 pages) focusing on the nominee’s teaching, educational leadership, achievements and other contributions to teaching and learning, as distinct from a standard C.V. pertaining to the nominee’s field of expertise;
  • For example, do not include field-specific research publications, but do include presentations at the Faculty Conference and other educational conferences, workshops on teaching & learning, textbooks, teaching awards, etc.
• Letters of support (please ensure that they do not exceed one page in length each) that provide specific examples of why the nominee should be considered for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction. There should be a minimum of six supporting letters, and they should include:
  • At least two letters from an undergraduate student or alumna/alumnus (if the nominator is a student, there has to be at least one letter from a student other than the nominator);
  • At least one letter from a colleague (if the nominator is a colleague, there has to be at least one letter from a colleague other than the nominator);
  • At least one letter from an administrator, other than the Dean whose letter is already included;
  • At least one letter from outside the nominee’s School/Department;
  • At least one letter from outside the nominee’s Faculty;

Students writing support letters should disclose their relationship with the nominee (e.g. current student, former student, research assistant, working under nominee’s supervision, etc.).

The total number of the above required pages is at minimum 13 and at maximum 21. This allows the nominator to include another 11 to 22 pages of additional evidence or support letters.

The nomination file should clearly address the Award Criteria.

The Ryerson Chancellor’s Award of Distinction recipient is selected by the University Teaching Awards Selection Committee (UTASC). The UTASC has an overarching goal to help advance teaching and learning at Ryerson through the University-wide Teaching Awards Program by ensuring that high quality candidates, whose achievements meet or exceed the awards criteria, are selected for the available university teaching awards;

The UTASC Chair and the LTO Director write a congratulatory letter to the recipient;

Following notification to all nominees and nominators, the Provost makes a public announcement regarding all Awards recipients. After the Provost's announcement, the LTO posts the information on Teachnet, RFANet, on the LTO website and on the Ryerson website, building up to the Awards Ceremony.

Also, the LTO publishes a special Awards issue of the Exchange newsletter.

The recipient of the Ryerson Chancellor’s Award of Distinction is recognized with an Award certificate and a monetary award of $5,000 at Ryerson Awards Night. The Citation will be read out. The recipient will have an opportunity for a very brief acceptance speech (1-3 minutes).

The recipient of the Ryerson Chancellor’s Award of Distinction will present the Convocation Address at a subsequent Spring or Fall Faculty convocation ceremony. He/she also delivers a presentation to the Ryerson community as part of the Ryerson Teaching Award Recipients Series.

November 1, 4:00 PM: All two-page Briefs are to be submitted online.

November 7: Deadline for each FAC to select a candidate, if any, for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction and for the Chair of the FAC to communicate the results to all nominees and their nominators;

November 23, 4:00 PM: All completed nomination files for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction must be submitted online.

December 15: Deadline for the UTASC to complete their deliberations. The Committee reserves the right not to confer the President’s Award of Distinction in any given year if no suitable candidate is identified.

January 31: The results are communicated to the recipient’s nominator, as well as to all unsuccessful nominees and their nominators.

Dalia Hanna, Manager, Learning & Teaching, dhanna@ryerson.ca 416-979-5000 ext. 6598