Adding an Award

When a new award is established in your department or program, add it to the Awards Application. Once a recipient to the award has been added, the award and recipient will appear on your website's annual awards List Page. This will also generate a Show Page for the new award. The Show Page is a place to highlight public information about the award—its purpose, the selection criteria, the donor, etc. 

See some examples of information on Show Pages from these CHSS awards:

Before You Begin

First of all, before you set about adding a new award, make sure that you are not adding an award that already exists. Don't recreate an award that is already in the system. To add the name of a new recipient for an existing award, click on "Add an Awardee" (on the left) for instructions.

Second, assemble the information about the award you'll need. Of the information below, only the name is required.

  • Exact name of the award
  • A short description
  • A long description
  • Any other information you want to present about the award or its donor
  • An image (Choose an image carefully; it is better not to have an image than to have an inappropriate one or one of poor quality.)

The new award won't appear on the annual awards List Page for a given year until at least one recipient for that year has been added.

Follow these Steps to Add a New Award

From the Dashboard

  1. Click on "Academics" in the left navigation and click on "Awards" in the drop-down menu.
  2. In the "Awards for [your website]" window, click on "Create New" box in the upper right-hand corner.
  3. Originating site: Click on the down arrow on the right side of the text box and click on your department.
  4. Name: Click in the text box and type the name of the award. Use sentence capitalization.
  5. Classification: Click on the down arrow on the right side of the text box. From the drop-down menu, click on one of the three classifications — Undergraduate, Graduate, or Alumni.
  6. Short Description (optional): Click on the down arrow on the right side "Descriptions and Image." Click in the “Short Description” text box. Enter a brief (one sentence or two, at the most) description of the award. If you are copying text from Word to paste into the description, be sure to click on the "Paste as text" icon above the text box to toggle that option on before pasting. This description will appear on the annual awards List Page. It is important to keep this short so the awards List Page doesn't become too long, requiring the viewer to scroll a lot. 
  7. Long description (optional): Click in the “Long Description” text box. Enter a more detailed description of the award. If you are copying text from Word to paste into the description, be sure to click on the "Paste as text" icon above the text box to toggle that option on before pasting. This description appears on the award Show Page. If you do not add a long description, the short description will appear on the award Show Page.
  8. Additional information in the right side bar (optional): Click in the "For more information" text box to add information to appear in a right sidebar. If you want a heading for the additional information, highlight the text you want as the header, click on "Paragraph" above the text box and from the drop-down menu, choose "Heading 2." For an example of how this will look, see: http://chss.gmu.edu/awards/27.
  9. To add an image to the awards Show Page (optional): Click on the "Choose File" box next to "Award image file," click on the file name, then click on the "Open" button to upload the image file.
  10. Save the Award:
    • Under the “Publishing Controls” box on the top right, click on the “Save Changes" button. 
    • Check both the List Page and the award Show Page online. Correct errors. Save.