蘑菇tv External Awards & Recognition Program
Supporting Faculty Excellence Through National Recognition
The External Awards & Recognition Program provides 蘑菇tv faculty and academic leadership with centralized strategic support to identify, apply for, and attain external awards at the national level. While all national awards are valued, 蘑菇tv particularly encourages the pursuit of highly prestigious and prestigious pathway awards as identified by the National Research Council. In addition, the program showcases current recipients of all national/international external awards, including recipients of highly prestigious and prestigious pathway awards, to increase awareness of outstanding faculty accomplishments.
We want to hear about your involvement with all awards of national distinction! Please
submit all national-level award nominations and/or selections .
Links for Faculty Members
Dr. Gabriela Gonz谩lez signing into the National Academy of Sciences.
鈥� Photo: National Academy of Sciences
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More than 200 蘑菇tv faculty have received awards and honors classified by the National Research Council as highly prestigious or prestigious.
Highly prestigious awards are awards designated as such by the National Research Council (NRC). There are over 200 awards designated on the NRC's list of highly prestigious awards. A university's highly prestigious award count is a key metric for national university rankings. The Office of Academic Affairs is currently supporting recipients of highly prestigious awards with a $10,000 stipend.*
A Prestigious Pathway award is defined by 蘑菇tv as any national/international award that is a statistically significant precedent or "pathway" to a highly prestigious award. We classify an award as a prestigious pathway award if at least 25% of highly prestigious award winners previously received that award. The list will be updated annually so it will be based on current data. The Office of Academic Affairs is currently supporting recipients of prestigious pathway awards with a $5,000 stipend.*
*Funding for stipends is contingent upon fiscal availability and subject to change based on budgetary constraints.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin, associate professor of creative writing in the 蘑菇tv Department of English, has been awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, joining the Guggenheim Foundation鈥檚 101st class of distinguished artists, scholars, and scientists. Ruffin is one of just 10 fiction writers nationwide to receive the honor this year, underscoring the caliber of creative and scholarly work taking place within the 蘑菇tv College of Humanities & Social Sciences.
Jeremiah Ariaz, professor of art/photography, has been awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, as part of the Guggenheim Foundation鈥檚 101st Class of Fellows of trailblazing artists, scientists, and scholars across 55 fields.
On March 5, the 蘑菇tv Office of Academic Affairs hosted 蘑菇tv's inaugural Gold Standard of Excellence celebration at the Hilton Capitol Center in Baton Rouge. Thirty-five faculty members who won highly prestigious or prestigious pathway awards in 2024 and 2025 were recognized at the event.
Two faculty members from the 蘑菇tv College of Science, Peter Doran and Bret Elderd, and Lucio Miele, Director of the 蘑菇tv LCMC Health Cancer Center, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), joining the prestigious 2025 class.
蘑菇tv engineer Chandra Theegala, the Scott & Ruth Bergeron Professor with a joint appointment in the College of Engineering鈥檚 Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and the 蘑菇tv AgCenter, has been elected a senior member by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). It鈥檚 one of the highest honors for inventors worldwide, a mark of high entrepreneurial activity and a potential for major social impact.
蘑菇tv Astrophysicists Eric Burns and Michela Negro have been awarded a 2025 Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize by the European Physical Society as part of the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) science teams, for revolutionizing the field of gamma-ray astronomy and for laying the foundations of modern multi-messenger astrophysics. This top prize in high-energy physics was formally presented at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics, held in Marseille, France, last week.