Award Guidelines

Nominations, including self-nominations, are invited for all Southern States Communication Association awards.  Nominees must be SSCA members in good standing.

For all SSCA awards , a single letter of nomination is required.  Although this may be written by the nominee, most nomination letters are written by colleagues who know the nominee and his or her qualifications well.

For all SSCA awards except the Minority Retention and Recruitment Award, the nominee's curriculum vita is required (the MRRA honors an institution, so a CV would not be appropriate).

For all SSCA awards except the Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award, a maximum of three (3) supporting letters and five (5) pages of additional supporting documentation may be submitted, but are not required. 

Submission Process

In all cases, electronic submission is preferred-to the Chair of the relevant award committee.  If electronic submission poses a hardship or for any supplementary materials that cannot be submitted electronically, the nominator must have the nomination packet or supplementary materials delivered to all members of the relevant committee by the submission deadline.

Award Policies

1. Recipients of all ten Association Awards (named above) receive nice plaques and luncheon tickets.  These awards are presented by the chair (or other member) of the Award committee at the Association's Award luncheon. 
2. Each recipient of a "major" award from a division that offers one (e.g., Gender Studies has the "Gender Scholar" and Communication Theory the "Outstanding Scholar") will receive a certificate with nicer cover and a luncheon ticket.  These awards may be presented by the Vice President at the Association's Award luncheon, or by the Division Chair or Vice Chair at the Division's business meeting. 
3. Recipients of "Top Paper" and "Top Student Paper" awards given by Division and Interest Groups will receive certificates with covers, which are given at the business meeting of the Division or Interest Group.  Other awards (e.g., "Top Three Paper") will be acknowledged by Association-prepared certificates, which are also given at the Division or Interest Group business meetings. 
4. All of the above awards are to be financed out of the Association's general revenues. 
5. Because divisions will no longer have to pay for awards from their own budgets, divisions will be allotted $75 per year to help finance creative convention programming, to recruit a speaker to the convention who would not otherwise attend, etc.  The specifics of these expenditures, if any, must be negotiated with and approved by the Executive Director.