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The deadline to nominate West Virginia’s Professor of the Year is this Friday, Nov. 22.
Since 1984, the Faculty Merit Foundation of West Virginia has recognized and brought to the attention of the general public innovation and creativity among the faculties of West Virginia’s public and private institutions of higher education.
“The West Virginia Faculty Merit Foundation has just one purpose, and that is to recognize and to reward and encourage excellence in college teaching in West Virginia,” said Ken Sullivan, board member of the Faculty Merit Foundation.
He said professors do many things, including research, but the Foundation highlights the importance of teaching.
“We all benefit by the quality of higher education and the students … that emerge from the institutions each year,” he said. “I think we all have a vital stake in West Virginia higher education and its success. The purpose of the foundation is to recognize that and to honor excellence in teaching wherever we find it.”
Sullivan said due to that focus, smaller schools are competitive for the award. Seven different West Virginia colleges and universities have had faculty win the award in the past 10 years.
“We get applicants from WVU (West Virginia University) and Marshall, and frequently they win. Our current Professor of the Year is from WVU,” Sullivan said. “But if you look over the entire series, and we’ve been doing this almost 40 years now, you’ll find that the smaller institutions really are competitive. Probably the one college that won it more often than any other [is] Shepherd University out of Shepherdstown. West Liberty, out of the Northern Panhandle, also has done really well in recent years, especially in the natural sciences, and they send some good applicants our way.”
He says a variety of subjects are also well-represented.
“We often will have people as different as musicians, mathematicians, natural scientists, people in the arts and humanities,” Sullivan said. “We get, typically, a very good representation of the various fields.”
The Professor of the Year will receive a $10,000 award. Finalists will be announced in the spring.
