FECS Excellence in Education & Outreach Award
Efforts to improve physics education and public engagement with physics are vital to the health and advancement of individual programs and the discipline as a whole. The APS Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS) recognizes the invaluable and often uncelebrated contributions of early career scientists to these endeavors through an annual award.
The FECS Excellence in Education & Outreach Award is a $2500 honorarium and certificate of recognition presented to an early career scientist who has made such a contribution. The awardee will also be invited to give a talk at a future FECS session at an APS meeting.
Rules and Eligibility:
The nominee must be a FECS member (free to join for APS members), and an early-career scientists who received their terminal degree in the past 10 years.
Nomination and Selection Process:
The nomination letter should include a statement (500-word maximum) about the nominee's past contributions to education and/or outreach in STEM, broadly defined. Self-nominations are welcome.
The nominee's CV and contact information for one reference, or for two references in the case of a self-nomination, are also required.
A subcommittee of the FECS Executive Committee will evaluate nominations and select a set of finalists for the award. The references for the finalists will then be contacted, and a second round of review will be conducted to select an awardee.
Criteria that will be considered include: the significance and impact of work by the nominee, the depth and duration of work by the nominee, and the interest in ongoing or future work on the part of the nominee. Evaluators will apply a broad definition of both education and outreach work.
Nominations for the 2026 award are open and due August 2, 2026 by 11:59 PM ET. Submit nominations via the application portal. Please send any questions to John Palmore Jr, Past Chair of the FECS executive committee (palmore@uw.edu).