Equity Awards
The submission deadline has passed. Awardees are announced in the fall, and the next contest will begin in the spring.
The AHA Equity Awards are meant to recognize and publicize those who have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historical discipline.
To further this goal, the AHA has established two equity awards to be given annually: one for individuals and another for academic units. The awards can be conferred for new initiatives or for sustained efforts. The current prize amount is $1,000 each for the individual award and the institutional award. See the list of past recipients.
Deserving nominees will have records that include such achievements as mentoring, program building, fundraising initiatives, pursuing civic engagement, and enhancing department and campus culture to promote a supportive environment.
Academic units such as departments of history, public history programs, and interdisciplinary programs and research institutes are eligible for the institutional award. Such units may have taken advantage of university and community resources to diversify their students and faculty or to provide professional experience through teaching, research, post doctoral, or internship programs.
Individuals or institutions can nominate themselves or be nominated. Cover letters for nominations should emphasize specific outcomes. The AHA’s Committee on Minority Historians will serve as the award committee that will review the nominations to make the awards.
Application Process
Log into your MY AHA account at historians.org/myaha and click “Available Application Forms” in the AHA Awards, Grants, and Jobs section. If nominating someone else, select the Nominate button and search for the nominee’s existing record or create a new record. (For the Institutional award, select one person to be the primary nominee.)
- Fill in the application form, which includes the nominee’s contact information and the name of academic unit (for Institutional award).
- Upload an Application Packet as a single PDF. Include the following documents:
- Cover letter (up to 750 words) describing the new initiative or sustained effort of the nominee
- CV (for the Individual Award)
- Nominators should be prepared to provide a list of references with contact information (minimum of 3) at the request of the award committee. These can be students, former students, parents, colleagues, and others. There is no set proportion or formula on the “right” mix of references. Individuals organizing nominations should solicit a cross selection as appropriate to address the essential elements noted above.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2022, to be eligible for the 2022 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2022 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2023 AHA annual meeting in Philadelphia.
For questions, please contact awards@historians.org.
2020 Equity Award
Institutional Award: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of History
The AHA Committee on Minority Historians is pleased to grant the 2020 Institutional Equity Award to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of History. UNLV is a Minority Serving, Hispanic Serving, and Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander Serving Institution. The history department reflects this diverse student body: one-third of tenured and tenure-track faculty and one-third of graduate students come from communities of color and communities striving for more equitable access to the academy. This increasingly more diverse faculty has ensured student success and has placed students of color in the pipeline toward a more diverse professoriate and greater representation in cultural institutions.