Nominations are now being accepted for the 2022-23 James H. Burness Awards for Excellence in Teaching. The Penn State York Nittany Lion, left, presented Joan Smeltzer, assistant professor in mathematics, the teaching award for full-time faculty during the 2022 awards program. Audra Weaver, adjunct lecturer in communication arts and sciences, not pictured, received the part-time faculty award.
YORK, Pa. — Nominations are being accepted for the 2022-23 James H. Burness Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award is given annually to recognize any aspect of excellent instruction — lectures, demonstrations, classroom activities, handling of discussions, individual attention, laboratory instruction, etc. — that contributes to the academic quality of Penn State York.
The purpose of the award is to recognize excellence in instruction, not to identify the most popular faculty member. The teaching award is named in memory of the late James H. Burness, in recognition of his outstanding teaching and service to the campus. Burness died in December 1999.
All Penn State York faculty are eligible to be nominated except for recipients of the award in the past four years: Nicole Muscanell and Janet McNally (2019); and Sonia Molloy and Lou Paioletti (2020); Joe Royer and Megan Lorenz (2021); and Joan Smeltzer and Audra Weaver (2022).
Two awards are given: one to a full-time faculty member and one to a part-time faculty member. Do not worry if you are unsure whether a faculty member is full-time or part-time, the Teaching Award Committee will divide the nominations accordingly.
This nomination form is for faculty who are teaching in fall 2022. Nominations should be as specific as possible with comments about nominees. When the committee receives a nomination such as "She's a great professor and definitely deserves the award," it does not help much in making a decision.
Nominations should be submitted online by 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2.
