LEA Award Program Problems

LEA's award program suffers from lack of participation, even though it operates in an environment rich in talented education professionals. Nominations are not numerous enough, for most awards, to provide appropriate "competition." Complicating the process is the reluctance of nominees to provide profiles, which we use to select the honorees.

Assuming that the award program is a valid way to carry out part of LEA's mission to "link, equip, and affirm" educators in Lutheran ministries, I would be reluctant to abandon the concept. With that in mind, perhaps we could partially address the second part of the problem by making it easier for nominees to complete the profile. Maybe one way of doing this involve using survey software, like Zoomerang, to ask questions that supply limited choice answers and a text box for elaboration, when necessary. I'm not sure what those questions would be, but I think some creative editing might get at the information we need to select honorees. Before spending a lot of time in such editing, I'd welcome your comments, especially to this issue.

Getting more nominees is the first problem, but I think that might be more easily addressed than the second part of the problem. Therefore, though it might seem a bit backwards, I'd like to stick to the second part of the problem for now.