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Humanities and Social Sciences 
Faculty and Staff Resources

Nomination Procedures: Distinguished Professorships

Follow these guidelines for nominating faculty for distinguished professorships.

  1. Introduction
    1. These guidelines specify criteria and procedures for selecting nominees for Distinguished Professorships and Distinguished University Professorships.
    2. These guidelines do not apply to Named Professorships.
    3. These guidelines supplement NC State REG 05.20.17: Professorships of Distinction. If there is any conflict between the college guidelines and the University regulation, the latter will prevail.
  2. Criteria
    1. Bestowal of a professorship of distinction is a high honor, not a right. The following criteria aim to ensure that candidates nominated by the Dean merit this honor.
    2. Distinguished Professor: A candidate must have the rank of Professor, be a recognized national or international leader in his or her field, and be a highly productive scholar who has demonstrated a high level of productivity, and is expected to sustain that level into the future. (See also clause 3.1 of REG 05.20.17.)
    3. Distinguished University Professor: A candidate must satisfy all the criteria for Distinguished Professor and must, in addition, have improved the quality of NC State and served its mission through service and involvement in the campus community.
  3. Procedures
    1. The College will, at times determined by the Dean, and no more often than every two years, invite departments to submit a letter of intent to nominate a faculty member for Distinguished Professor or Distinguished University Professor. The College will typically request that these letters be submitted to the College by November 30. Letters of intent will be accepted only upon an announcement from the Dean that the College invites these letters.
    2. The Dean (and those charged with reviewing applications) will review these letters of intent and, if the Dean believes that the proposed candidate is a worthy candidate for this distinction, will invite the Department to prepare a full nomination. The target date for this determination is January 5.
    3. Within two months of receiving the Dean’s approval, heads of departments of approved candidates will submit documentation concerning these candidates to the Dean. Candidates will not participate in their department’s nomination and approval process.
    4. Within a month of receiving documentation from the departments, the Dean, in consultation with at least one department head and one professor of distinction in CHASS, will decide which of the candidates approved by departments will be nominated to the Provost.
    5. As soon as possible thereafter, the Dean, in consultation with the heads of the home departments of the candidates to be nominated, recommends college faculty to constitute and chair the committee that will make recommendations concerning the nominated candidates to the Provost. (This committee is the same as the one mentioned in clause 4.5 of REG05.20.17.) The committee recommended by the Dean will have at least five members and include a Professor recommended by the head of the home department of each of the nominated candidates. A majority of the committee members will be distinguished professors.
  4. Documentation
    1. The department head provides the departmental voting faculty with each proposed candidate’s Curriculum Vitae and between one and ten pages of further relevant documentation prepared by the person or persons who proposed the candidate.
    2. The department head provides the following documentation concerning each approved candidate to the Dean: a covering letter in which the department head reports the departmental voting faculty’s vote, makes a recommendation, and sets out the reasons for that recommendation; the candidate’s Curriculum Vitae; letters from three or four external distinguished experts in the candidate’s field attesting to the candidate’s standing and productivity and to the quality and impact of the candidate’s scholarship; and between one and ten pages of further relevant documentation prepared by the person or persons who proposed the candidate.