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Dissertation of the Year

Call for Nominees

Supported by the SACSA Foundation via the generous donations of its membership, the Southern Association for College Student Affairs presents an annual Dissertation of the Year Award (DOY) to recognize high quality student affairs research by doctoral students in the SACSA region. Please note, to receive the award, the recipient must be a SACSA Member. If you're not a member, become one today!

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Qualifications

  • Dissertations must be completed and signed between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
  • Applicants are required to be SACSA members at the time of submitting the application.
  • The applicant’s doctoral granting institution or institution of employment as of Fall 2024 must be located in the SACSA region (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia).
  • The dissertation must advance inquiry related to the field of student affairs.

Criteria

The strongest applications will demonstrate evidence the following attributes:

  • A timely, trending, or cutting-edge topic that advances discourse about the field of student affairs
  • A topic that addresses issues particularly seminal to institutions, faculty, administrators, and/or students representative of the SACSA region
  • A significant, unique, or innovative theoretical contribution to the field of student affairs
  • A cohesive, well-reasoned, and rigorous methodological approach to empirically examining the question at hand
  • Implications that guide strong, improved, and/or innovative practice in student affairs
  • Alignment with at least one of SACSA’s core values: inclusiveness, professionalism, collegiality.




Application Requirements


A complete application will include the following:

  • A cover page with the author’s name, dissertation title, doctoral institution, institution of employment (if applicable), and contact information along with the name and contact information for his/her/their dissertation Chair.
  • A Dissertation Summary with all identifying information removed. This summary should not exceed 10 typed, double-spaced pages (not including the cover page, references, and appendices) and must include the following sections:
    • Literature Review: provides a summary of the scholarship used to describe the history, key variables, and/or research relevant to the topic.
    • Conceptual Model (if applicable): details any theoretical frameworks used to guide data collection and analysis strategies.
    • Methodology: justifies the research approach, steps taken, and instruments used to collect, organize, and analyze data
    • Discussion: synthesizes key findings of the dissertation research
    • Implications: discusses how the research and its findings have the capacity to impact future student affairs research and/or practice.
  • Letter of Support from the dissertation chair outlining the extent to which the applicant’s dissertation meets the aspirational criteria listed above.

Deadline & Submission

DOY submissions are due no later than Monday, September 23rd at 11:59 p.m. EST and should be submitted via email attachment to Dr. April Perry at sacsaresearch@gmail.com. Please make the subject of your e-mail submission “SACSA 2024 DOY SUBMISSION.”

Award & Recipient Obligations

The DOY award recipient will be slotted to present the results of their dissertation research at SACSA's 2024 Annual Conference and will be notified by October, 14th so that plans to attend the conference in November may be finalized. The DOY award recipient will also be honored at the Conference Awards Ceremony and will receive a small monetary prize of $750. The DOY recipient is responsible for paying their own conference registration travel and fees up-front mindful that the monetary prize is intended to reimburse a portion of those expenses. The DOY award winner is also encouraged to submit an article about their dissertation research for possible publication in SACSA's College Student Affairs Journal (CSAJ) within a year after receiving the award. Articles authored by DOY recipients will be reviewed and selected in accordance with the standards set by the CSAJ Editorial Board for blind peer-review.


Additional Information
For additional information, please contact Dr. April Perry by clicking the button below.

Dissertation of the Year Inquiries
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