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The Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award

The Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award recognizes faculty or staff who have made exceptional contributions to the quality of undergraduate education at the university. The prize carries an honorarium of $5,000.

I. ELIGIBILITY

  1. Nominees must be faculty or staff who have worked at the university for at least threeyears. Faculty nominees must have had primary classroom responsibility for a course during one of the two immediately previous fall and spring semesters; nominees from the administrative staff must have been instrumental in the development of a curricular or co-curricular program that has significantly benefited undergraduates at Maryland.
  2. Previous recipients of the Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award will not be eligible.
  3. Only new or updated nomination packages submitted for this year’s award will be considered. Nomination packages from previous years will not be carried over for reconsideration.

II. NOMINATION PROCEDURE

A packet (in PDF format) should be submitted to the Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award Committee no later than March 31, 2026, containing the following materials:

  1. Nomination cover sheet. (See attached sample)
  2. Nominee’s current CV.
  3. A nomination letter detailing the nominee’s contributions to undergraduate education at Maryland.
  4. A letter of endorsement from the dean or department head (or associate dean or associate head, if the nominee is the dean or department head) highlighting the primary reasons the nominee should be considered for the Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award.
  5. Documentation of the nominee’s contributions and achievements that bear on undergraduate education at Maryland. This could include previous awards or instructional development grants, authorship of books or web sites, and program and cocurricular development. Materials may provide evidence of instructional effectiveness (such as a summary of course evaluations and peer observations), curricular improvement and innovation, formal and informal academic advising, leadership of campus committees related to undergraduate education, advising undergraduate organizations.
  6. Two letters of support from students (for faculty, one of the students should have recent or current classroom contact with the nominee).
  7. Two letters of support from colleagues who are especially knowledgeable about undergraduate education and familiar with the nominee’s accomplishments.

III. SELECTION PROCEDURE

1. The Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award Committee is appointed by the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean for Undergraduate Studies. The committee will be chaired by one of the campus’ Distinguished Scholar-Teachers. In addition to the chair, the committee shall include four faculty members from a range of disciplines who have extensive experience in undergraduate education; ideally, at least one of these four faculty members shall also be a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. In addition, two academic administrators with longstanding involvement in undergraduate education at Maryland, a representative of the Parents’ Association, and the President of the Undergraduate Student Government shall also serve as members of the committee.

2. The committee will submit their nomination for the Kirwan Undergraduate Education Award to the Dean for Undergraduate Studies by April 15, 2026. The Dean will then submit a nomination memorandum to the Office of Faculty Affairs by April 30, 2026. This memorandum should include a list of the committee members, the number of nominations and the rationale for the selection. The Office of Faculty Affairs will forward the nomination to the Provost & President’s office for approval. The President will notify the winner. The Dean for Undergraduate Studies is responsible for notifying other candidates.

IV. AWARD PRESENTATION

The award will be conferred at the annual Fall Convocation.

AWARDEES OF THE KIRWAN UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION AWARD

  • James Wallace, Mechanical Engineering – 2006
  • James Glass, Government & Politics – 2007
  • Sandra Greer, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry & Biochemistry – 2008
  • C. Fred Alford, Government & Politics – 2009
  • Mark Wellman, Robert H. Smith School of Business – 2010
  • Richard Bell, History – 2011
  • Robin Sawyer, Behavioral & Community Health – 2012
  • Marilee Lindemann, English – 2013
  • Steven Rolston, Physics – 2014
  • Cynthia Clement, Economics – 2015
  • Scott Wolpert, Mathematics – 2016
  • Valencia Skeeter, African American Studies – 2017
  • Reid Compton, Biology – 2018
  • Scott Roberts, Teaching and Learning Transformation Center - 2019
  • Todd Cooke, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics – 2020
  • Ann Smith, Undergraduate Studies – 2021
  • Sarah Balcom, Animal and Avian Sciences – 2022
  • Madlen Simon, School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation – 2023
  • Katerina Thompson, Biology – 2024
  • Lawrence Washington, Mathematics – 2025