Purpose

The purpose of this award is to recognize teachers with significant accomplishments and outstanding leadership in programs and activities that promote community involvement.

Recipients of this award must have made significant contributions toward training, motivating, and inspiring their peers and students to become involved in programs and projects that benefit their communities.

Eligibility

Individual members who are currently employed as full-time classroom/laboratory teachers in a career and technical education program are eligible recipients for this award. Nominees must be classroom/laboratory teachers at the time of nomination and winner must be a classroom/laboratory teacher at the time of award presentation. Contributions and achievements on which the nomination is based should have been made within the past five years. The nominee also should have been involved in some capacity in Association for Career and Technical Education activities at the state, regional and/or national level and must have been a member of ACTE and a state association for at least the past three consecutive years.

Application Procedures

Each nominee shall submit a nomination dossier consisting of the following:

1. Forms B-1 and B-2 (pages 1-2)
2. Support information becomes pages 3-7.
   • Section A - A description of no more than two pages of the applicant’s community service work and/or significant accomplishments in the area of training, motivating and inspiring peers and/or students to become involved in projects benefiting their community.
   • Section B – Community Service Awards or Acknowledgements (should include dates of presentation and organization names).
   • Section C – Community Service and Civic Organization Memberships.
   • Section D – Professional Memberships and Professional Association Activities (must include dates of service).
3. Letters of support, limited to a maximum of six, should be pages 8-13 of the nomination dossier. Letters should be one page in length. These letters should come from the following individuals:
   • The nominee’s immediate supervisor.
   • An administrator.
   • A colleague or former student.
   • A community lay person.
   • Two additional letters of choice.
4. One photograph of the nominee. The photograph is used for publicity purposes only.

Applicants should submit information written in the 3rd person context rather than the 1st. Events should be dated and listed with the most recent submitted first. All materials must be word processed or typewritten on 8-1/2 X 11 sheets with 3/4" margins, left, right, top and bottom.

All materials must be submitted at the same time as a complete package. No supplementary materials may be submitted; items not outlined above will be discarded before judging. All procedures must be followed for an application to be considered. Applications that do not follow these procedures will be rejected and returned.

The completed materials should be submitted to the Regional Awards Committee Chairperson no later than the dates indicated by the Region.

Videotapes (see paragraph below) should be sent to Executive Director, Association for Career and Technical Education, 1410 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

Video Interview

All regional nominees are required to submit a videotape or DVD (one copy) of no more than 10 minutes in length to the ACTE Awards Committee. The videotape interview, which accounts for 65 of a possible 165 points in the selection process, should feature only the nominee. To qualify for full points, the video interview can have no narrator, no scenes with students, no sound effects, no clothing changes and no background changes. (It is preferable to be standing or seated in front of a plain background, allowing the committee to focus on the response.) Up to 10 points may be deducted for non-compliance. After an introduction detailing the nominee’s name, region, school and program area, the nominee should answer these three questions:

What is your philosophy of teaching career and technical education?

Identify and discuss two challenges you faced in implementing community service projects and how you met the challenges.

What do you see as the connection/benefit of community service to career and technical education?

Deadline

Materials for each regional winner must be received at ACTE headquarters by September 12, 2008. Videotapes are due October 3, 2008. Deadlines for submission of state winners to regional competitions are listed on the State/Regional page.