2025 Distinguished Teaching Prize Process

Each year the selection of our Distinguished Teaching Prize winners includes multiple steps and input from many members of our college community. The process begins in early November and continues through mid-April. 

We start by inviting nominations for the prize from our college community: students, faculty, and staff. Nominators may nominate more than one instructor; instructors may nominate themselves.

For our first round of reviews, we invite those nominees who have taught for at least 3 consecutive years at the college to submit a sample assignment that represents their teaching and a rationale for the assignment design. Our reviewers, a volunteer team of faculty, students, and staff, read and rate the assignments and rationale according to a detailed rubric that creates equity in the ratings across disciplines.

In the second round, those nominees who earned the highest ratings are invited to submit full dossiers that illustrate their teaching strengths and development. Second round nominees submit teaching philosophy statements, examples of their teaching, their CVs, and any supplemental materials they choose, such as letters of recommendation and student testimonials.

Our second round reviewers read these dossiers and rate the overall presentation and content. The top scores in this round identify the semi-finalists, whose dossiers are discussed with the entire review committee, who engage in multiple rounds of discussion and voting to select our finalists.

The review assignments for each round are matched to each nominee’s department or close discipline, shared understandings of particular teaching contexts, and when possible, at least one former Distinguished Teaching Prize winner and one current John Jay college student.

 

In November to December 2024, student, faculty, and staff nominated 113 faculty for the award, the highest number of nominees in the past eight years. 19 of 24 departments and programs were represented, with Law, Police Science & Criminal Justice instructors earning the most nominations. Our 2025 winners come from our Psychology department (11 nominees) and Sciences department (8 nominees).

Distinguished Teaching 2017-2025

More than 1,000 nominations have been submitted for the Distinguished Teaching Prize since 2017. An average number of 117 nominations are received each year. The number of winners and reviewers has remained relatively stable over the past 8 years; the spikes in nominations and nominators represent years in which more individual students identified and praised the instructors who had impacted their learning, career plans, and wellbeing. 

 

Our students recognize the excellence and hard work of all their instructors: here we see the impact of part time faculty teaching on student learning.

Nearly half of the instructors nominated are nominated in multiple years, suggesting that students continue to have positive, meaningful instruction from many of the same teachers over time. We want to celebrate in particular those faculty who have been nominated six times in eight years:

• Jill Frometa, Adjunct, Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025)
• Richard Haw, Professor, Sociology & Interdisciplinary Studies (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), 2021 Distinguished Teaching Prize winner
• Evan Mandery, Professor, Criminal Justice (2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025)