Killam Awards for Excellence in Mentoring at UBC 2026

The Killam Awards for Excellence in Mentoring recognize outstanding mentorship of numerous graduate students over many years. The awards will be adjudicated by a committee chaired by the Strategic Advisor, Graduate and Postdoctoral Funding, of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

The Killam General Endowment at the University of British Columbia (administered by the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic) provides the funds for the awards.

Table of Content

• Summary
• Benefits
• Requirements
• Interview Process
• Application Deadline
• How To Apply

Summary

• Application DeadlineSeptember 4, 2026
• Value$5,000
• Study LevelMasters , PhD
• SponsorUniversity of British Columbia
• City to studyVancouver
• School to studyUniversity of British Columbia
• Eligible CountryAll Countries

Benefits

A commemorative certificate and a cash award of $5,000 will be presented to each recipient at Fall Convocation.

Requirements

• All continuing academic staff members with a partner, clinical, tenure or grant tenure appointment at the UBC Vancouver Campus are eligible to be nominated.
• Nominees may be at any stage in their academic career, but one award will recognize faculty members in the mid-career category – that is, for those who have held university appointments for less than 12 years – and the other will recognize faculty members in the senior category – that is, for those with 12 or more years of university service. Years of university service will be counted as of the nomination deadline. 
  • Please subtract any leave time the nominee has taken - parental leave, sabbatical, etc.
• Unsuccessful nominations from previous years may be submitted for subsequent competitions, to a three-year limit. 

Selection Process

As departments are limited in the number of faculty members they can nominate, Department Head approval of the potential nominee must be obtained by the nominator before proceeding to assemble a nomination package.

Nominators: Faculty members may nominate a faculty member for this award (fill out the nomination form); mentees/students cannot nominate a faculty member.  However, mentees/students may suggest to the Department Head a potential faculty member to be nominated and may contribute a letter of support for the nomination.

Re-nominations: Unsuccessful nominations may be submitted for subsequent competitions, to a three-year limit. Nomination packages (or portions thereof) may be updated for subsequent competitions or the packages may be carried forward unchanged. Nominations will not automatically be carried forward: departments must contact [email protected] to ask that the package be included in the current competition. Any amended materials are to be submitted via the Qualtrics link.

Each department may submit up to two nominations, one per category (‘mid-career’, ‘senior’).  The two nominations may be new nominations or nominations carried forward from previous competition years (re-nominations). 

A complete nomination package will consist of the following, submitted as 1 PDF document per nominee by Friday, 4 September 2026 at 4:00 pm PT.

1. Nomination Form, which includes:
   • Up to a two-page statement detailing why the nominee qualifies for the award
   • A one-page statement by the nominee describing his or her philosophy on mentoring, and how he or she views the role, including comments on approaches to promoting student success
2. Mentoring Record form: Completed by nominee.  A list of all graduate students mentored, including brief descriptions of any notable circumstances of students.
   • It is acceptable for nominees to include graduate student mentorship activity from prior institutions.
   • As this award is specifically for graduate student mentorship, materials regarding undergraduate teaching or mentoring, or postdoctoral mentoring, will not be considered for this competition and should not be included in nomination packages.
3. Up to five letters of support from individuals who are being/were mentored by the nominee, each including a summary of the author’s experience with the nominee and subsequent career development.  Letters from current or former graduate students will carry more weight.
   • Letters should include details and examples of the author’s experience with the nominee
   • Letters should reflect on the author’s mentoring experience with the nominee and how the experience enabled them to succeed in their subsequent career.
   • Letters must have one author each; a letter with multiple authors will not be considered.
   • Original, and scanned copies sent by email directly to the department are acceptable
   • Letters must be signed by the author
   • Letters must be a maximum of 2 pages
4. The nominee’s current curriculum vitae
   • If the nominee is not already using this format, please encourage them to use the CV for the Professoriate Stream template available on this UBC HR webpage.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

Complete nomination packages should be submitted via the Qualtrics form (link is below). Please do not upload nominations to UBC SharePoint.

SUBMIT NOMINATION HERE

Application Deadline

How To Apply

To apply, visit UBC Scholarship webpage