Awards are due April 15, 2024.
Please find specific instructions for submitting each award/honor below as well as formatting guidelines for these submissions.
Style Guidelines & Check List for Submissions
- Check that all students are SAS students and seniors. NOTE: Students can be recognized as Paul Robeson and Henry Rutgers Scholars prior to their senior year.
- Provide an RUID for all students.
Every student’s name should be entered in the following format:
- First Name, Middle Initial with period, Last Name (Sherri S. Somers)
- Please be sure to check (and confirm with students if there are questions) spelling, any accents, and mid-name capitalization. For example: Ronald R. McDonald
For Henry Rutgers Scholars nominations: Please be sure to double-check thesis titles before submitting.
Honors Theses
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. This message will also include instructions for how departments/programs without honors thesis courses should submit the information for their students.
If you have questions or concerns, please contact Sharon Bzostek sbzostek@sas.rutgers.edu
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, 2024.
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 Sharon Bzostek at sbzostek@sas.rutgers.edu
Departmental Honors & Awards
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 seniors@sas.rutgers.edu 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, 2024.
Please log into the web-app to enter your award recipients: https://secure.sas.rutgers.edu/apps/gradawards/
Exciting update for 2023! If you have a list of recipients all receiving the same award, we now have a bulk upload option.
pdf Please find instructions for how to use the web-app system here. (793 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 Courtney Stanzione at cstanzione@sas.rutgers.edu
SAS Outstanding Service Award
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
Nominees must be an SAS student and have earned a cumulative GPA ≥ 3.0 by the first day of their graduating semester.
Nominations
Each year, a call-for-nominations email will be sent to faculty, advisors, staff, and students.
Nominations may be made through the Nomination Form by Rutgers faculty/staff, Rutgers advisors/counselors, supervisors/mentors involved in the student’s service organization, other Rutgers students, or others with knowledge of the student’s service contributions.
Nominators are asked to write a narrative of the student's service and provide an explanation of any course credit and/or financial compensation received for service.
Students: If you think your service is worthy of recognition in light of this award, and would like to be nominated, please work with a faculty or staff member, a Rutgers advisor or counselor, or your supervisor or mentor to submit a nomination on your behalf.
All nominations and supporting materials are due by April 15.
For questions or concerns please contact Nicole Gangino at ndallara@sas.rutgers.edu