Recognition in the field can be seen as another indicator of productivity, broadly defined, and as a goal that can bring greater job satisfaction, and perhaps indirectly affect such outcomes as likelihood of receiving a grant. One recent report examining the percentage of women nominated to an honorific society or for a prestigious award, and the percentage of women nominees elected or awarded from 1996 to 2005, found the percentages to be quite low (NAS, NAE, and IOM, 2007:128).
We asked respondents whether they had been nominated by their current department or institution for any international or national prizes or awards. Appendix 4-22 gives the number of faculty in each discipline who reported being nominated for at least one award at their current institution, as well as the number of missing responses in each discipline, by gender group. Overall, there was no gender difference in rate of nomination, with 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women reporting that they had been nominated. There were differences across gender when the data were disaggregated into the six disciplines we surveyed. Women were more likely to be nominated than men in electrical engineering and in civil engineering, and men were more likely to be nominated than women in biology and mathematics. Future research should also ask about nominations for university prizes or awards, and should ask separately about awards for research and those for teaching.
We looked at whether the probability that a faculty member would be nominated for an international or national prize or award was associated with various institutional or individual variables. There were 796 faculty with information for nominations and about all covariates in the model, and 240 of these reported having been nominated for an award. The probability that a faculty member would be nominated for an award was significantly associated with discipline, prestige of the institution, and type of institution. With one exception, none of the interactions between gender and any of the other variables was significantly related to the probability of being nominated for a prize or award. The exception was the interaction between gender and discipline, which was statistically significant (p < 0.01). This significant interaction prevents us from discussing the effect of discipline in isolation.
The probability that a faculty member would be nominated for an award was higher at private than at public institutions (p = 0.03). At institutions of high or medium prestige, faculty were either 1.5 or 5.5 times more likely, respectively, to be nominated for awards than at institutions of lower prestige. Not surprisingly, faculty with more refereed publications were more likely to be nominated for a prize or award than faculty with fewer, but this difference was not substantial.