What IS the Award of Excellence?

Developed by Michigan leadership educators and student leaders, and reviewed each year, the Award of Excellence is an opportunity to review your student group in its entirety. You will look at how your group is organized, how you complete processes, how you plan projects, and even how you work on collecting information for the (sometimes daunting) bid packet. Rather than being called an application, the process is called "bidding" for the award, since we are looking at your process of presenting information--rather than coming in and judging your actual processes. Schools that consistently receive the award are the schools that take a team approach to their bid process. Read below for even more tips and tricks!

The Bidding Process

Any MASC/MAHS member school leadership class, honor society, or student council may bid for the award. The bid packets below contain TONS of information, rules, and regulations. We urge you to read through the award at length and organize your team PRIOR to beginning your process. In the past, the groups who were the most organized, and who FOLLOWED the directions faithfully were the ones who walked away with the award.There are 600 possible points for the Award of Excellence bid, you must receive 95% of the possible points (a score of 570 or higher) in order to successfully win the award. Middle schools and junior high groups have their own bid packet, however ALL schools will use the same rubric for grading.The MASC/MAHS deadline for ALL awards (including the Award of Excellence) is March 1, 2012. This is the "recieved by" date, not the postmark date. Electronic and faxed applications are not accepted.

Click here to download the high school bid packet.

Click here to download the jr. high/middle school bid packet.

Click here to download the 2011-2012 rubric for all Award of Excellence bids.

Tips and reminders

One of the KEY concepts of the Award of Excellence process is teaching our student groups to be DILIGENT and DETAILED. However, each and every year we have high quality group's bid packs that miss the award cutoff by simple oversights. You can control this! Develop a process for your group to make sure you don't miss ANYTHING small, and that the committee is grading your work on merit alone. Below we have highlighted some reminders that are often overlooked.

• Your award should NOT be bound in any way. The award will not be returned to you in hard copy, instead, a digital PDF scan of the document will be returned with results. It is for this reason that binders, oversized pages, clear protective sheets, and extra "frills" should not be included with your bid pack. We want to judge your award from its content rather than its appearance.
• If you are in a group that has an alternate structure (i.e. you don't use treasurer's reports) give us the CLOSEST alternative. With having a large scope of student organizations completing the award--it is hard to find terms that everyone uses.
• Don't pick your FLASHIEST projects to highlight, pick the projects that you are able to describe and illustrate the best.
• Since each school can have up to three bids (honor society, leadership class, and student council) why don't you invite a group from your school that has never participated in the process? This could be a great bridge-builder for your group, and you could share proof-reading capabilities!
• Assume that the committee knows NOTHING about your school or activity. (In many cases, they won't!) Assumptions are the FASTEST way to losing points.
• Request your check early. One of the reasons that the application fee is involved is to prove that your group has a proper financial management system in place. Late checks WILL NOT be accepted.
• Check out our example and explanation download for the GOAL SETTING SECTION
• Check, double-check, triple check your bid packet. Check it against the general information section. Did you check it? Good! Have another group member check it! Have someone from outside your organization check it. Check it against the rubric (that's why we give it to you!). Check it for completion. Check it for spelling and grammar. Check it for page numbers. Check it! (We think you get the picture.)
• Advisers should ADVISE the process. Students should be WRITING the bid. Advisers should not be writing the bid. This is a student process.
• Make sure your bid arrives to the Lansing office no later than 3/1/12. We do not accept fax or electronic submission of this award. Late submissions will be returned, ungraded.