Faculty Awards
Our faculty members do amazing things and routinely earn national recognition. Their achievements reflect the passion and expertise they bring to their fields and the excellence that distinguishes an Ohio State education.
Additional internal awards
- The 2023 Faculty Mentor Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has engaged in exceptional mentoring of postdoctoral scholars by creating a supportive environment for research among other notable qualities.
- The 2023 Faculty Outstanding Postdoctoral Service Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has gone above and beyond in mentoring teams of postdoctoral scholars, or who has otherwise made substantial contributions to the postdoctoral training experience at Ohio State.
2023 Faculty Awards surprise visits
2023 Faculty Awards winners receive surprise visits from members of the Ohio State administration, colleagues and family.
Did you know?
The Office of Academic Affairs awards the permanent, honorific title of Distinguished University Professor on a competitive basis to full tenure-track professors who have truly exceptional records in teaching, research, scholarly or creative work and service.
Featured Faculty
2023 Distinguished University Professor Award - Elena Irwin
Elena Irwin’s research addresses the sustainability of human-natural systems at local and regional scales, focusing on land use and ecosystem services across urban and rural areas. She has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on multiple research projects totaling over $19 million in funding, including funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the James S. McDonnell Foundation and other private and public sources.
In August 2021, she was appointed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator as an advisory member of the chartered Science Advisory Board as well as the Agricultural Science Committee. She is a Fellow and former executive board member of the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association, and in 2022 was selected as a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the association’s highest honor. She has served on multiple national research committees with the National Research Council and NSF, including as a member of NSF’s Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education Subcommittee on Sustainable Urban Systems.
As faculty director and co-founder of Ohio State’s Sustainability Institute, she provides leadership to interdisciplinary sustainability research and teaching across the university, including cultivating campus-wide collaborative research and curriculum development efforts.
Irwin’s mentorship of students includes an emphasis on interdisciplinary research for which she is well-known, along with a focus on inclusion in all aspects of the grant writing and publication process and an overall dedication to their success, noted a nominator. In 2015, she was honored with the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Educator Award.