About President Faculty Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the President's Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards are and who runs them

The President's Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards are a faculty recognition program run by Robert Morris University, a university in Pennsylvania. Unlike Best of the 'Burgh or the other reader ballots published by Pennsylvania media outlets, this ballot runs on rmu.edu, the university's own website, with no commercial contest platform in between. The university states that it values the work carried out by its faculty members and their commitment to the success of RMU, and the awards were established to recognize that work formally.

The published structure is specific: the program recognizes one university faculty member every academic year in each of the three Academic Excellence core value areas, which are Teaching, Scholarship, and Service. That makes this an honor judged by academic units rather than a popularity ballot open to any business in a market, which is the single biggest difference between this program and the best-of ballots it sits beside on this site.

Because Robert Morris University is both the organizer and the host, everything on the ballot, from the announcement to the recognition ceremony, is controlled by the university itself rather than by an outside publisher.

The dated timeline: editions, the fall window and what the university leaves unpublished

The dated timeline for this program is unusually deep for a university award. The recipients page on rmu.edu lists honorees by academic year, with named recipients for 2016-2017, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, and the ballot itself carries confirmed edition years of 2024, 2025 and 2026. That makes the program annual on the evidence of its own pages, with a run that reaches back across a decade of academic years.

Within each cycle the sequence is fixed. The award is announced by the President in the first week of the Fall semester. Nominations are received by the Provost, and in the 2025 cycle the deadline was the close of business on Friday, September 19. Committees are formed by the Provost by the end of the second week of the term, and recognition of the award recipients takes place in the Spring Full-time Faculty Convocation, which places the public outcome months after the nomination window closes.

What the university does not print is just as relevant to a supporter. The awards page publishes no per-person voting limit and no eligibility rule for nominators, and it does not lay out the exact opening and closing dates of the nomination window; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The three Academic Excellence areas are published, but any finer breakdown of the ballot is left to the live page rather than to a standing list.

How a supporter actually backs a nominee at Robert Morris University

Supporting a nominee here starts with the nomination, not with a vote button. The route printed on the awards page runs through the Provost: a supporter puts forward a faculty member whose work fits Teaching, Scholarship or Service, and the Provost's office receives those nominations during the fall window that opens with the President's announcement. Because the committees are formed by the Provost by the end of the second week of the term, a nomination that arrives after the September cutoff lands in front of a panel that has already been seated, which is why the deadline matters more here than on a ballot that stays open for weeks.

After the committees form, the supporter's role shifts to following the cycle. The public outcome arrives at the Spring Full-time Faculty Convocation, so there is no running vote tally to watch through the winter the way there is on a media reader's ballot. A supporter who wants to strengthen a case before the committees sit can point to the nominee's published work in the relevant Academic Excellence area, since the award recognizes one faculty member per year in each of the three areas rather than a single overall winner.

The practical checklist is short: read the current announcement on rmu.edu, match the nominee to one of the three areas, submit to the Provost before the fall deadline, and follow university announcements toward the Spring Convocation.

How this ballot sits beside its Pennsylvania neighbours

Every other Pennsylvania program on this site is a media-run reader's ballot: Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine), Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine), Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), Erie Reader Best of Erie and Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice. Each of those is open to businesses and services across its market, runs on a publication's schedule, and decides winners by raw public vote counts.

The President's Distinguished Faculty Achievement Awards sit apart from all six on three points. The organizer is the institution itself, Robert Morris University, so there is no publisher mediating between the nominees and the outcome. The nominee pool is the university's own faculty, not a market's businesses. And the decision route runs through the Provost's committees and the Spring Full-time Faculty Convocation rather than through a public tally that closes on a deadline night.

For a supporter, that changes what help is worth. On a reader's ballot, volume of votes in the final days can decide the result. Here, a nomination that reaches the Provost on time and fits one of the three Academic Excellence areas does more work than any late surge, because the committees that judge the award are seated within a fortnight of the term's start. The market context is still Pennsylvania, and readers comparing ballots across the state should read this page as the university-honor case and the six media ballots as the reader-choice case.

Strengthening support for an RMU nominee without risking the nomination

Because the Provost's committees judge this award, support that arrives as a clear, documented case in Teaching, Scholarship or Service travels further than raw vote volume. Colleagues and students who back a nominee can coordinate on the substance: matching the nomination to the right Academic Excellence area and submitting it before the September cutoff the 2025 cycle used.

On outside help, the university's awards page does not print a rule about purchased or coordinated votes, so the organizer's position is simply not on the page and should be read there before anyone spends money on support. The general legal position is covered in our legality guide, and the mechanics of building genuine support on a public ballot are in how to get more votes online. What holds on any ballot holds double here: a nomination judged by a university committee rewards a credible case far more than an inflated tally, and nothing on the organizer's page suggests otherwise.