Submitting Senior Awards & Honors

Paul Robeson Thesis Scholar

Conferred upon all School of Arts and Sciences students who have successfully defended a departmental or interdisciplinary senior thesis. NOTE: Students can be recognized as Paul Robeson Scholars prior to their senior year.

OUE will be sending each department a list of potential Paul Robeson Scholars based on the course rosters from the department's thesis writing course sequence. We ask that you carefully check this list and confirm or send us any additions/corrections by April 15th. More detailed instructions on how to submit corrections or additions will be included in the email with the student list from OUE. 

If your department does not have a thesis writing course OUE will reach out to you directly to identify Paul Robeson Scholars. 

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Sharon Bzostek This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Interdisciplinary Honors

These students will be identified by the SAS Honors Program which runs the Interdisciplinary Honors course sequence. 

Henry Rutgers Scholar Awards

Please find directions below on how to nominate a student or students for consideration for Henry Rutgers Scholar Awards, to recognize the outstanding senior honors theses for the academic year. Each Henry Rutgers Scholar will receive a financial award and be recognized in this year’s convocation program. Deadline for nominations is April 15, 2022.

Please submit the nomination through this online form. 

The nomination must include the following materials:

1. A completed online nomination form (this will include a short summary of the student’s thesis).
2. A letter of support from the student’s faculty advisor/s. Letters of support can be uploaded through the online nomination form.

Please note that all nomination forms must come through the department (IHT’s being the exception). The form includes a request to rank nominees if your department submits more than one thesis for consideration for an award. This is a competitive process, and we rely on your guidance on how to rank students within your discipline or the interdisciplinary field. NOTE: Students can be recognized as Henry Rutgers Scholars prior to their senior year.

Please find below some further guidelines to use in deciding which theses to nominate:

• The thesis/candidate should represent your department's highest quality work as determined by a faculty committee. If the department makes distinctions between "Honors," "High Honors," and "Highest Honors," the Henry Rutgers Scholar Award should be reserved for exceptional "Highest Honors" candidates.
• If the department requires a committee defense or a virtual public presentation in addition to the work itself, the quality of all elements should be taken into account.
• Criteria for selecting candidates should be similar to those used for judging the quality of work in your discipline, including the originality of the research and conclusions, the effectiveness of the communication of findings and results, and evidence of superior critical reasoning and scholarly achievement.
  Please keep in mind that a limited number of awards are given across all SAS departments, so only the strongest candidates should be nominated.

Nominations will be reviewed by the SAS Henry Rutgers Scholar Review Committee.

 If you have any questions, please contact Kate Cahill at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Departmental Honors

Departmental Honors is entered directly into the Senior Certification database, one student at a time, using the drop-down associated with your major. NOTE: If you need access to the database, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for access and assistance. 

Departmental Awards & Prizes

Please find directions below for how to submit students in your department who received your department specific awards and prizes. The deadline to enter the recipients of the awards for the convocation program is April 15, 2022.

Please log into the web-app to enter your award recipients:  https://secure.sas.rutgers.edu/apps/gradawards/

pdf Please find instructions for how to use the web-app system here. (826 KB)

The app is prepopulated with the awards and descriptions that were granted to SAS students over the last few years. If you have new awards, they can be created in the system. NOTE: Please do not change the text descriptions of the awards.

If you have any questions, please contact Lenore Neigeborn (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Service Award

Description 

Service is defined as work that contributes to the welfare of others, communities, and institutions, or the advancement of common pursuits through uncompensated activities.* The SAS Outstanding Service Award is awarded each year to a select number of graduating students who, during the course of their undergraduate years, have demonstrated strong scholarship and extraordinary service and/or leadership to local, national, and global communities; the University; or its students. Extraordinary nature of the service and/or leadership should be demonstrated by impact and duration.

Examples of service contributions include, but are not limited to:
• Engaging in activities to help our communities to be more sustainable, more inclusive, safer, or healthier
• Supporting under-resourced and under-represented communities in a dedicated way
• Demonstrating a commitment to social or environmental justice, human and animal rights, or contributions to a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable community
• Mentoring other students, including school-age or university-level

*In exceptional cases where students would not have otherwise had an opportunity to participate in service, the awards committee will accept nominations for students who have engaged in extraordinary service that was compensated.

Requirements & Nominations

Nominees must be an SAS student and have earned a cumulative GPA ≥ 3.25 by the first day of their graduating semester. Nominations may be made by Rutgers faculty/staff, Rutgers advisors/counselors, supervisors/mentors involved in the student’s service organization, other Rutgers students, self-nominations or others with knowledge of the student’s service contributions. Each year, a call-for-nominations email will be sent to faculty, advisors, staff, and students.

Nominations Process: All nominations and supporting materials are due by April 15.

There are two ways to be nominated:

1. Nominate a Student

Nominators should submit nominations through the Nomination Form

Please inform the student of their nomination and have them fill out the Nominee Materials Submission Form.

The following should be included in the submission form:

Service narrative (1,000 character maximum)
Explanation of any course credit and/or financial compensation received for service
Resume 

All materials are due by April 15, 2022.

2. Student Self-nomination

Students may self-nominate and submit the required materials by completing the Self-Nominations Submission Form no later than April 15. 

The award committee will review the nominations and submitted materials and notify awardees and nominators by email by May 1.

For questions or concerns please contact Sharon Bzostek This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.