Elsie M. Hood Award Nominations Due March 1

Honor is university's top teaching accolade

Nominations for the UM Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher Award are due March 1. John Rimoldi (left), the 2017 winner, accepts the award from Chancellor Jeffrey S. Vitter. Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Communications

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi is seeking nominations for the 2018 Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher Award, which is the highest honor the university bestows upon its professors.

Faculty, staff, students and alumni are encouraged to submit nominations by March 1 for this year’s honoree. Assistant, associate and full professors are eligible, except previous recipients of the award. The winner receives a $5,000 prize and a personal engraved plaque, and their name also goes on a permanent display in the J.D. Williams Library.

“At the University of Mississippi, we uphold the highest standards of teaching excellence and student engagement in higher education,” Chancellor Jeffrey S. Vitter said. “Each year, we honor one of our many inspiring and extraordinary faculty with the coveted Elsie M. Hood Award, which is considered the pinnacle of reaching this standard.

“We have exceptional, engaging teachers across all disciplines, and I am eager to see who will join the esteemed list of honorees going back more than 50 years.”

The selection committee comprises previous recipients, along with the director of Alumni Affairs and a student representative. Criteria include nominating letters that describe examples of exceptional teaching and letters that have been submitted for the nominees in previous years. 

UM’s Faculty Senate submitted a proposal to then-Chancellor J. D. Williams in 1965 to create a program of recognition and awards for superior teaching. The following spring, a committee solicited nominations for an Outstanding Teacher Award from faculty, students and alumni.

Then-Vice Chancellor W. Alton Bryant suggested that the award be presented on Honors Days and announced during Commencement exercises, and this has remained the policy.

Previous winners of the award include John Rimoldi, Mark Wilder, Laurdella Foulkes-Levy, David Willson, Gregory Schirmer, John Neff, Kelly G. Wilson, Ethel Young-Minor, John O’Haver, Ann Fisher-Wirth, William Berry and Bob Brown.

John Czarnetzky, the Mitchell, McNutt and Sams Lecturer at the School of Law, won the award in 2016. He chairs the committee that will select this year’s winner. 

“Having known and admired several previous recipients, my first thought upon receiving the award was genuine humility and surprise at being recognized as part of that group,” Czarnetzky said. “Perhaps the most gratifying thing about receiving the award is the fact that recipients are nominated by the Ole Miss community, and it is nominations by students that are particularly important.

“I can think of no other honor I could receive as an academic that would mean more to me than receiving the Elsie M. Hood Award.”

Nominations can be submitted by faculty, students, and alumni online here, by email to chancellor@olemiss.edu or by mail to the Office of the Chancellor, Lyceum 123, University, MS 38677.