Gardner Institute Announces National Award recognizing the work of Russell C. Edgerton

About the Russell C. Edgerton Award

This award celebrates a distinguished contribution to improving undergraduate student success and will serve annually to recognize the professional life of Russell C. Edgerton, a higher education leader whose vision made possible undergraduate education reforms that are now well-established and benefit thousands of institutions and millions of students. The annual award presentation will be accompanied by the delivery of a lecture by its recipient or an appropriate organizational representative.

The Gardner Institute is establishing this award out of its gratitude to Russ Edgerton for his vision, big-picture thinking, and his contributions to improving undergraduate education.

This award will recognize an individual, institution, or organization at work in U.S. higher education that has:

• Produced a significant idea and vision for how to improve higher education outcomes for students and moved that vision to a significant scale.

• Demonstrated how the idea could be replicated, assessed, and continuously improved.

• Combined these accomplishments with a capacity for still greater realization and impact.

• Had in Russ Edgerton’s words, a significant ability “to make institutions take more responsibility for student learning.”

Russell C. Edgerton Served Higher Education As:

• The first staff member and Associate Director of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education;

• President of the American Association for Higher Education

• Senior Program Officer for Higher Education at The Pew Charitable Trusts

• Director of the Pew Forum for Undergraduate Education.

Russ’ thoughtful leadership in those roles brought many big ideas, innovations, programmatic initiatives, organizations and movements to the fore in American higher education including but not limited to:

• The Service-Learning Movement

• Campus Compact

• The AAHE Assessment Forum

• The Education Trust

• The National Survey of Student Engagement

• The Community College Survey of Student Engagement

• The AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards

• The Higher Learning Commission’s Academic Quality Improvement Process

• The John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education

Nominations:

Nominations are solicited in the form of a detailed cover letter and supporting documentation which can be submitted electronically to John N. Gardner, Chair and CEO of the Gardner Institute at gardner@jngi.org .

You may also contact John Gardner at gardner@jngi.org or 828-885-6014. Nominations are due by January 6, 2020, winners will be notified by February 15, 2020.

The John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education is a twenty-year old non-profit organization dedicated to partnering with colleges, universities, philanthropic organizations, educators, and other entities to increase institutional responsibility for improving outcomes associated with teaching, learning, retention, and completion. Through its efforts, the Institute strives to advance higher education’s larger goal of achieving equity and social justice.