UMass Lowell's Faculty Excellence Awards recognize and celebrate the outstanding performance of UMass Lowell faculty whose work exemplifies excellence in teaching, mentoring, community engagement, and research. Award recipients are selected through a review process conducted by the Faculty Excellence Awards Committee.
The Faculty Excellence Awards portal for the current award cycle is now open, with applications accepted through April 3, 2026. Award recipients will be announced in the first week of May.
The following award categories are available this year. Please use the left navigation menu to review application guidelines, rubrics, and details for each award:
- NEW!: Award for Excellence in Research
- Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching
- Award for Excellence in Online Teaching
- Award for Excellence in Teaching for Adjunct Faculty
- Award for Excellence in Mentoring Students
- Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Faculty
- Award for Excellence in Community Engagement
Faculty are encouraged to nominate their colleagues, and self-nominations are welcome. Nominations from students are not permitted; however, students are encouraged and welcome to write support letters when asked by nominated faculty members (except for the research award category).
Important Note: As part of the application process, applicants will be asked to request support letters from colleagues and students. This is done directly through the application portal by entering names and email addresses of your supporters. The system will automatically send a request for a letter on your behalf. Applicants are strongly encouraged to alert their colleagues/students / supporters to expect an email from: webutil@uml.edu to ensure that the request for supporting letters do not get filtered into spam folders.
Please note that requesting and receiving support letters takes time and advance planning. We strongly recommend starting your application early to allow sufficient time for supporters to submit their letters and for all required materials to be uploaded to the portal before the April 3 deadline. Beginning an application close to the deadline may limit your ability to gather complete materials in time.
To promote transparency and support applicants, we encourage all faculty to review the Faculty Excellence Awards evaluation rubric (located in the left navigation panel), which outlines the criteria and expectations used by reviewers across all award categories.
Thank you for all your contributions to UMass Lowell. We look forward to recognizing and celebrating your accomplishments!
