The essential idea of these awards is to emphasize educators who treat teaching as a priority in their professional lives, and whose teaching goes beyond simple classroom excellence. Educators should be possessed of self-reflection and show strong evidence of innovation and improvement in their teaching and development of educational resources, especially through use of tested, evidence-based pedagogies.

Possible areas of excellence that could be considered include: 

• contributions to evidence-based pedagogy (e.g., through publication of scholarship of teaching and learning scientific articles),
• contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning,
• attention to accessibility and inclusivity of learning environments,
• self-reflective and responsive approaches to teaching,
• active integration of one’s own research or professional experience into teaching,
• innovation in development and/or implementation of new courses, curricula or programs,
• innovation in community building for statistics, especially for students,
• innovation in pedagogical methods

Some evidence of breadth of impact on statistics education beyond a nominee’s institution should be clear, for example: 

• creation of Open Educational Resources (OERs),
• organization or presentation on topics related to statistics education at national and international conferences,
• authorship of book chapters or textbooks relating to statistics,
• editorial or senior editorial roles relating to statistics publications, or
• general contributions to the Canadian statistics education community.

This list is intended to be examples of contributions and is not necessarily exhaustive. 

Eligibility

• Nominees must be a current member of the Statistical Society of Canada, should have an active connection to both Canada and the Canadian statistics education community and should have made contributions to statistical education in Canada, but need not be currently working or living in Canada.
• For the Early Career Educator Award, nominees must be within 10 years of their first full-time tertiary educational appointment which included a statistics teaching role, with additional time allowance made for any career interruptions and leaves of absence up to a maximum of five additional years.
• The SSC values and encourages Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in all of its nominations and awards. Please see the SSC guidelines on implicit bias (pdf).

Nomination procedure

The nomination package should consist of a letter of nomination and at least two (and up to four) letters of support from past students, as well as the nominee’s CV and if available, the nominee’s teaching portfolio. Such nominations should make clear how the nominee has had broad and deep impact: broad across the Canadian community in some way, and deep in their personal, local teaching. The latter should be supported by the student letter(s) of support. The committee will then consider the following criteria in considering nominees for the award: 

• Demonstrated excellence in the practice of teaching statistics, as communicated by the nominator
• The relative impact of the nominees’ contributions beyond their institution
• The clear connection of the nominee to Canada and the Canadian statistics education community, and ensuring that they are current members of the SSC.

Note: research student supervision is explicitly excluded from consideration for these awards.

Nominations should be sent to the Chair of the Statistics Educator Awards Committee by email (ssc-statedawards-chair@ssc.ca). The deadline for nominations is January 31.

For further information or assistance, email the Chair of the committee. Please note that the submission process is not complete until the chair has confirmed receipt of the nomination. Submissions that do not get awarded are carried over three nominations rounds, and may be updated yearly.

Awards: A certificate, suitably inscribed and framed, to be presented at the SSC Annual Meeting banquet together with the other major SSC awards, and a cash prize of \$1000.