by the Chancellor's Awards Committee
Concerning Award Recipients
The Chancellor's Awards Committee seeks to
foster appreciation for excellence in academic work and student activities
at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It seeks to
identify areas in which achievement is not but should be recognized, and
seeks to reward superior achievement in an annual ceremony at which the
University community celebrates its outstanding student
accomplishments. In fulfillment of that purpose, the Committee has
been charged with the responsibility for establishing and administering
criteria for inclusion of awards in the Ceremony, encouraging the
establishment of new awards to meet perceived needs; for determining the
appropriateness of awards and prizes to be included in the Ceremony; and
for planning the Ceremony.
In pursuit
of excellence the Committee has sought to accentuate the unique qualities
of superior achievement. It believes good work is commonplace in
this learning community. It also believes that superior
achievement is, by definition, rare, and that the best in any
endeavor represents singular achievement. In the belief that the
number and kinds of awards representing student life and academic work are
large and inclusive, the Committee has sought to expand the list of
student endeavors in which outstanding accomplishment is worthy of
specific University recognition. In pursuit of the ideal of superior
personal achievement the Committee has sought to recognize those students
whose achievements are uniquely excellent. By this reasoning the
Committee has held out the ideal of single recipients of all awards as the
most appropriate means of honoring singular achievement.
At
the same time, the Committee recognizes the occasional circumstance in
which an award selection committee might be unable to choose between
equally qualified candidates for an award. However conscientious,
the Committee's efforts might end in a tie. While the Awards
Committee's commitment to the goal of selecting single recipients for
awards in the Chancellor's Ceremony is unchanged, it also accepts in
principle the rare but no less real possibility of selecting more than a
single recipient for a given award.
The
Committee believes that sponsors who cannot accept the principle of
singular recipients should not seek to have their awards included in the
Chancellor's Ceremony, and as a matter of practice, it reserves the right
to confirm that multiple candidates proposed are equally qualified.
It will include in the Ceremony only awards of those sponsors who formally
subscribe to the principle of single recipients and pledge to structure
their selection process to achieve that goal. For a few awards
established in the past, a single recipient of each sex has been deemed
acceptable; however, no new award that designates the sex of the recipient
will be accepted.
The Committee
welcomes and encourages the establishment of appropriate new awards.
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