Spring Excellence Awards

The winners of the second round of Chancellor Mike's Excellence Adventure were announced earlier this month

The Texas A&M University System awarded $507,000 to outstanding faculty throughout the system in the second presentation of the Teaching Excellence Awards, a voluntary, student-selected honors program launched last fall.

The 144 faculty winners will receive checks ranging from $2,500 to $10,000. Texas A&M University had the most recipients, with 54, followed by Texas A&M University-Commerce, 17; Prairie View A&M University, 15; Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, 13; West Texas A&M University, 12; Texas A&M International University, 10; Texas A&M University at Galveston, 7; Texas A&M University-Kingsville, 9; Tarleton State University, 4; Texas A&M University-Texarkana, 3.

Last time, 500 faculty participated in the pilot program, which involved three schools. 46 winners at A&M represented the top 18%, so the total in College Station was ~256 out of ~2800 faculty, or 9%. This time 56 faculty were in the top 20%, so the participation rose to about 10%.

The Chancellor has said

"Money is not an incentive for [faculty]," he said. "They show up every day and do the best they can. They can't logically do better than their best. I call it a reward."

Vision 1920 agrees. No Aggie instructor would respond to an award that's about 20-25% of some of the winners' budgeted salaries by trying to game the system.