Submitting Senior Awards & Honors

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 celebration is April 15, 2025.

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

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. (522 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 

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.

Departments will enter their Paul Robeson Thesis Scholar Award recipients through the Departmental Awards & Prizes Database, along with all other departmental awards and prizes. Please review the instructions provided under "Departmental Awards and Honors" above, and then enter the awards here.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Sharon Bzostek

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

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  for access and assistance. 

The deadline to enter major honors for the convocation celebration is April 15, 2025.

Please review the following instructions for nominating one or more students for the Henry Rutgers Scholar Award, which recognizes truly outstanding departmental theses each academic year. Deadline for nominations is April 15, 2025.

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

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 service and/or leadership to any of the following:

• to local, national, and global communities;
• Rutgers University;
• or the undergraduate community.

The 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

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 an online 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. To see what is requested, pdf see the template Nomination Form (click here to download form). (80 KB)

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, 2025.

For questions or concerns please contact Nicole Gangino at

*NOTE: 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.