Cornelia Marschall Smith Award Call for Nominations
Baylor University announces the twentieth annual Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year Award, to be awarded to a Baylor faculty member who makes a superlative contribution to the learning environment at Baylor, including teaching which is judged to be of the highest order of intellectual acumen and pedagogical effectiveness, research which is recognized as outstanding by the national and/or international as well as local community of scholars, and service which is regarded as exemplary in building the character of intellectual community at Baylor.
Nominations are requested from all faculty, students, and alumni nominating their former teachers. Nominations of nominees from previous years are welcome (although previous recipients of the award are not eligible). Each nomination must be submitted to the candidate’s dean by 5:00 p.m., November 22, 2022, and must include
1. a letter of nomination from the nominator, telling why the candidate deserves the award;
2. a letter from the candidate agreeing to be considered for the award; and
3. a curriculum vitae from the candidate.
It is helpful to the committee to have as full an understanding as possible of the candidate’s work at Baylor, and to this end nominators are encouraged to include additional letters that address his or her contributions to Baylor from a variety of perspectives. These might include, for example, letters from colleagues at Baylor, current and former students, and persons outside Baylor who are familiar with the significance of the candidate’s achievements.
Deans are to submit nominations, along with their comments about the nominees, to the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs by December 9, 2022. The recipient of the award will be chosen from among the candidates by a committee consisting of four faculty members and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs.
The award, consisting of a plaque and a cash award of $20,000, will be presented at the University Honors Convocation held in April 2022. During the subsequent academic year, the recipient of the award will present a public lecture on an academic topic of his or her choosing.
Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith
Our professor of the year award is named in honor of Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith. Dr. Smith was an alumna, professor, and chair of Baylor’s Biology department. (She also wrote several books in the 1980s on Robert Browning and his poetry, from her office in the Armstrong Browning Library.)
Born in 1896 in a log cabin near Fredericksburg, Texas, Dr. Smith followed her sister to Baylor, and while here taught German to the children of President Samuel Palmer Brooks. She earned a B.A. (1918) at Baylor, an M.A. (1925) at the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. (1928) at Johns Hopkins. Widely celebrated for fine teaching and generous mentoring, she was also a researching scientist and a principled and thoughtful Christian. She remained a lively contributor to all dimensions of Baylor’s community—including musical, cultural, and athletic events—almost until her death at the age of 101 in 1997. It would be hard to imagine a better exemplar from the last century to model the all-around excellence we at Baylor seek to honor in the present century.
Previous recipients:
- 2004 D. Thomas Hanks
- 2005 Robert Malcolm Baird
- 2006 Kevin Pinney
- 2007 Ann Rushing
- 2008 Wallace L. Daniel
- 2009 William D. Hillis
- 2010 Joyce Jones
- 2011 Robert F. Darden
- 2012 Roger E. Kirk
- 2013 William H. Bellinger, Jr.
- 2014 Joseph A. McKinney
- 2015 David Lyle Jeffrey
- 2016 Johnny Henderson
- 2017 Alden Smith
- 2018 C. Stephen Evans
- 2019 Gaynor I. Yancey
- 2020 Andrea Dixon
- 2021 Mia Moody-Ramirez
- 2022 Kenneth W. van Treuren