The AIA Educator/Practitioner Net (EPN) announces the 14th AIA Education Honor Awards Program, which discovers and recognizes individuals who serve the profession as outstanding teachers. The program also serves to increase professional and public awareness of models of educational excellence in classroom, studio, community-based service learning, or laboratory work. All courses completed since January 1, 1998, that have not previously received AIA Education Honor Awards, are eligible for submission.

Evaluation criteria
The awards jury will seek evidence of exceptional and innovative courses that:
• Deal with broad issues, particularly in cross-disciplinary collaboration and/or within the broader community
• Contribute to the advancement of architecture education
• Have the potential to benefit and/or change practice
• Promote models of excellence that can be appropriated by other educators.

Submission date
All final hard-copy submission materials and any supplementary material—or, for Web-based submissions, notification of fully completed and accessible Web sites—must be received at the AIA no later than 5 p.m. EST on January 13, 2003.

Submission requirements
Submissions must include a 175-word (maximum) abstract, double-spaced, including the title and nature of the project. The abstract must be written on a single page, in a form suitable for national publication. In addition, submissions must include one copy of:
1. Letter of submission, providing: name(s) and professional title(s) of submitting teacher or teaching team members, course title, subject area, when it was offered, and to what level of students it was offered
2. An 8-1/2" x 11" envelope firmly attached to the back of the entry, containing names and titles of submitting educators(s); to assure blind review, no team or institution identification may appear anywhere else on the entry
3. Double-spaced description not to exceed five pages, including:
• Program’s place within the curriculum, such as the subject area, whether elective or required course, and dates it was offered
• Educational goals and teaching strategies
• Evaluation methods used to assess student work
4. Examples of student work
5. Letter from the institution’s dean/program director verifying course dates and the place of the instruction within the curriculum
6. Self-addressed stamped envelope for any portions of the submission to be returned, together with a note indicating precisely what is to be returned.

Submission media
The AIA fully recognizes that highly innovative interactive work in an electronic medium cannot always be adequately conveyed in a traditional 8-1/2" x 11" binder format. Accordingly, the AIA will make every effort to secure the means for jurors to consider submission materials in a wide range of formats (Web sites, CD-ROMS, brief VHS- or audio-tapes, etc.) However, because the program cannot rely on the seamless interaction of a vast array of technical devices at a remote jury site, the jury will primarily consider written and graphic hard-copy materials in its deliberations and access supporting materials at its discretion.

Selection
An independent jury will select the winning entries and present the awards during the 2003 ACSA annual meeting in March.

Dissemination
Winners will be notified in February 2003, and announcement of winning entries will appear in AIArchitect, ACSA News, and major commercial architecture publications. Current plans call for winning entries to be published on the AIA’s Web site and other sites. In addition, winners may be invited to participate in regional or national workshops or conferences as appropriate.

Please address entries as well as any questions to Ellen Scanlan Cathey, Assoc. AIA, Director of Education, The American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20006-5292; 202-626-7417; or ecathey@aia.org.

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.