Dear Colleagues,

We hereby invite you to nominate colleagues for LSJ's three awards at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to be held April 23-27, 2025.  We also invite you to volunteer to review nominations for each of these awards.

Completed nomination materials should be submitted to lsjawards@gmail.com. Please include two copies, one masked and the other with your name, institution, and contact information. To volunteer to review nominations, use this Google form.

The descriptions for the three awards are listed below and can also be found on the LSJ SIG’s AERA Website:  http://www.aera.net/SIG165/Awards

Social Justice in Teaching Award in Educational Administration: This award recognizes outstanding social justice teaching by a professor or instructor in the field of educational leadership.

Selection/Eligibility Criteria: Nominee must have been a teacher or instructor of record in a leadership preparation/development program affiliated with a university or school district during the previous academic year (e.g., 2023-2024 for the 2025 award).

Nomination requirements: Nominees should demonstrate social justice teaching that promotes equity, diversity, inclusion, and social reconstructionist education by providing a syllabus from a course taught within the past two years, submit a cover letter of no more than three pages describing their teaching philosophy as it relates to social justice, and supply a letter of support from a student and/or faculty colleague. Nominations, including self-nominations, should include a masked and original copy to lsjawards@gmail.com with the subject SOCIAL JUSTICE TEACHING AWARD.

Social Justice Dissertation Award: This award recognizes an exceptional dissertation that expands our knowledge of the complexity of social justice issues, whether in postsecondary, K-12, community-related, and/or social policy-related, is the focus of this award. We are looking for unpublished dissertations by graduate students. This award is to recognize the outstanding research of our graduate students. This award will also encourage early scholars to join LSJ SIG and grow the scholarship in the area of social justice.

Selection/Eligibility Criteria: Dissertations must be completed within the previous three academic years from the award date. For example, a dissertation award presented at AERA annual meeting 2025 must have been completed by 2021 or later.

Dissertations considered for the LSJ SIG Dissertation Award should:

1. Be completed within the previous three years of the award date. Dissertations completed prior to 2021 will not be considered.

2. Be submitted by a LSJ SIG member or the student of a LSJ SIG member

3. Align with the LSJ SIG mission

4. Seek to address significant research question(s)

5. Contribute to the literature on leadership for social justice

6. Be methodologically rigorous

7. Relate significant findings

8. Discuss the applicability of findings to practice and theory

Nomination requirements: Nominations, including self-nominations, should be no more than six-page summary of the dissertation. Include a masked copy and copy with author’s information to lsjawards@gmail.com with the subject SOCIAL JUSTICE DISSERTATION AWARD.

"Bridge People" Award: Inclusion and community are cherished values of the LSJ SIG. In their chapter, “Bridge People: Civic and Educational Leaders for Social Justice,” Shoho & Merchant (2006) describe individuals who “were committed to creating a bridge between themselves and others, for the purposes of improving the lives of all those with whom they worked. As such, they functioned as ‘Bridge People’ in the fullest sense” (p. 86). This award is meant to recognize individuals or groups whose work “creates a bridge between themselves and others” through scholarship and research.

Selection/Eligibility Criteria: Potential recipients for this award should demonstrate work that has created a bridge between themselves and others through scholarship and research. Nominees may include but are not limited to, individuals, groups, or organizations whose recent work or body of work have been a catalyst for bridging people or organizations, especially when those people or organizations have not historically been connected.

Nomination requirements: Nominations, including self-nominations, should include a description (maximum 3 pages) of the individual or group. No masked copy of nomination is required for this award. Nominations, including self-nominations, should be sent to lsjawards@gmail.com with the subject BRIDGE PEOPLE AWARD.

All winners will be presented with a plaque at the LSJ Business Meeting at the AERA Annual Meeting, April 23-27, 2025, in Denver, Colorado.

Nominations are due on Monday, January 6, 2025. We know this is a busy season. We appreciate your time, commitment, and support for our colleagues! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly, the chairs. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Lowenhaupt (rebecca.lowenhaupt@bc.edu) and Amaarah DeCuir (ADeCuir@american.edu)
LSJ SIG Awards Chairs, 2025