About the Award

The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education; who demonstrate a commitment to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others; and whose work reflects a strong emphasis on teaching and learning. (Information about past recipients of the Cross Award is available here.)

The awards honor the work of K. Patricia Cross, Professor Emerita of Higher Education at the University of California-Berkeley. Throughout her career, Pat Cross helped the higher education community better understand our students, their characteristics, and their needs, and recognize what our responsibilities should be. Her ground-breaking 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.

Eligibility
All doctoral level graduate students who are planning a career in higher education are eligible, 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. (Nominees must hold student status in January 2020.) 

Applicants must demonstrate:

• Leadership ability or potential for exercising leadership in teaching and learning, with a strong commitment to academic and civic responsibility; and
• Leadership or potential leadership in the development of others as leaders, scholars, and citizens.

For more information: https://www.aacu.org/AM20/CrossAward