K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award
The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.
Nomination Process
All doctoral-seeking graduate students who are planning a career in higher education are eligible for nomination, regardless of academic discipline. Graduate students in fields where the master’s degree is the terminal degree (such as the MFA in art) are also eligible.
Nominations by a faculty member or administrator are required.
More information about the 2023 Nomination Process
Nominations undergo a robust and multi-phase review process engaging past Cross Award winners and AAC&U staff. Winners are selected based upon their demonstrated commitments to equity, innovations in teaching and learning, and community engagement as integrated components of their graduate work.
Award
The awards are announced annually in December, and recipients of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards will be recognized at, and will participate in, AAC&U’s Annual Meeting in January.
The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards provide financial support for graduate students to attend AAC&U’s Annual Meeting. All award recipients are required to attend the meeting.
The awards include travel, lodging, meeting registration, and a one-year affiliation with AAC&U, including a subscription to Liberal Education magazine.
Each year, hundreds of laudable graduate students are nominated for the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. As such, all finalists—including the winners—are inducted into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society and have access to an exclusive community designed to support ongoing engagement, collaboration, and support.
For more information, contact Kathryn Enke at 202.888.4647 or [email protected].
Recipients of the 2022 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award
Becca Bassett
Education, Harvard University
Dale Brown
Interdisciplinary Studies (Philosophy & Educational Foundations), Western Michigan University
Erin Cassin
Biology, University of Nevada Las Vegas
Cynthia Garcia-Eidel
Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago
Caleb González
Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy, The Ohio State University
Teresa Hernández
English, University of Oregon
Whitney Tsai Nakashima
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles
J. Paul Padilla
Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English, University of Arizona
Aireale J. Rodgers
Higher Education, University of Southern California
About K. Patricia Cross
The awards honor the work of K. Patricia Cross, Professor Emerita of Higher Education at the University of California–Berkeley. Throughout her career, Dr. Cross helped the higher education community better understand our students, their characteristics, and their needs, and recognize what our responsibilities should be. Her groundbreaking scholarship paved the way for a legacy of work on age, socioeconomic class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and numerous other aspects of intersectional social identity.