Apply Now: Nomination Forms & Instructions

The Hoover Medal was established to recognize outstanding extra-career services by engineers to humanity. Herbert Hoover, in accepting the first Medal in 1930, stated the purpose of the Medal is to mark the public service of individuals who have gone outside of their strictly professional work to interest themselves in civic and humanitarian affairs. He praised the societies for establishing an award to stimulate engineers to contribute to public service.

Criteria for Award

In 2002, the Hoover Board issued this definition of an engineer, to be used as a guideline only: An engineer could be someone who is a professional licensed engineer or a full member of a Founder Society or who has a degree in engineering or who functions as an engineer at work. The definition is an evolving one and there may be gray areas. If the engineering aspect of a nominee’s career is neither apparent nor traditional, the Sponsor should discuss a nominee with the Board before working up a nomination.

The key item for the Award board’s consideration shall be the description of the nominee’s most outstanding contribution to the well-being of humanity performed or achieved as a result of the nominee’s leadership and/or through the nominee’s own personal efforts. This contribution shall not have been made as part of, or as a direct result of, the nominee’s regular career or job.

It is the aim of the Hoover Medal Board of Award to recognize the humanitarian and/or civic contributions of engineers who have personally been responsible

• for initiating, organizing, and/or significantly furthering a humanitarian or civic activity that has brought benefit or good to humanity and
• that is the result of the nominee’s own personal commitment to bring about such an end; and
• that does not merely represent either an expected or incidental beneficial result or outcome of the nominee executing the required duties of his or her engineering position and career.

For example, a Civil Engineer whose job responsibility was to effect the construction of a bridge or a water purification system in an impoverished country may have made a humanitarian contribution in improving the life of those affected by the result of his or her work, however, the task was performed as part of that person’s regular job function. In contrast, an Electrical, Mechanical or Chemical Engineer who utilized his or her own free time, personal efforts and/or own resources to organize a relief program for a country ravaged by a natural disaster would be making a humanitarian contribution that is not part of that person’s regular and expected professional engineering career duties and job function.

The humanitarian activity for which the candidate is being nominated does not have to have occurred simultaneously with the individual’s engineering career, but should have occurred after the individual had received a degree in engineering. Thus, for example, the individual may have had a career in engineering, retired therefrom and made the humanitarian contribution at a later stage in the individual’s life subsequent to the completion of a professional engineering career.

Nomination Form:

The Hoover Nomination Form must be used. Typing and computer generated input should be in 10 point (or larger) script.

2. If, and only if, 2A/2B do not clearly establish the engineering background of the nominee, the nominator may provide 2C, their Engineering education (school, degree dates) or a one page addition consisting of 2D, E, & F:

2D. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CANDIDATE’S ENGINEEERING BACKGROUND: List up to 5 major projects with which the candidate was involved, in order of significance. (additional detail will be discarded ), and/or

2E. LIST ANY TECHNICAL PUBLICATIONS THE CANDIDATE MAY HAVE AUTHORED: List up to 5 in order of significance (lack of publications will not affect consideration of the candidate; additional detail will be discarded), and/or

2F. LIST ANY U.S. AND FOREIGN PATENTS THE CANDIDATE MAY HAVE OBTAINED: List up to 5 in order of significance (lack of patents will not affect consideration of the candidate; additional detail will be discarded).

3.B/C CITATION: a 25-30 word summary of nominee’s “outstanding humanitarian or civic activities” listing achievements performed “extra-career”, not as a required job/career function. It may be in the form of 3B, a single, most important humanitarian or civic contribution. Optionally 3C may also be used: a list or summary (300 word maximum) of achievements but 3B/C must:

Describe the nominee’s most outstanding contribution to the well-being of humanity performed or achieved at the nominee’s own instance and/or through the nominee’s own personal efforts, and not as part of or in the regular course of or as a direct result of the nominee’s professional career in engineering and/or the nominee’s regular job function or duties or obligations of the nominee’s technical career or job. Give complete statements of the specific ways in which the nominee meets the requirements for the honor, with emphasis on the pertinent humanitarian and/or civic activities. Please remember that the judges of your nominee have only the facts and information submitted herewith on which to base their judgment.

This statement of achievements should be a succinct narrative summary written in the active voice with heavy emphasis on the accomplishments and the impact on the beneficiaries of the nominee’s actions that make the candidate worthy of the honor. This statement may be written around the chronological steps in the nominee’s career. Such a treatment permits a simpler biographical statement for item 6. Were any or all of the other major participants in a collaborative effort also engineers? Please name any and all other major participants in the endeavor who are also engineers.

4. The Nominator, their address and society affiliation, as well as the board sponsor must be identified.

5. REFERENCES: Sources of the five attached letters. (Names and addresses of the individuals who prepared the five attached letters of support.) Use the online Reference Letter Form to be found below.

The supporting letters can be attached but may be sent directly to the Secretary of the Medal Board of Award. These letters should be based on the writer’s personal knowledge of the nominee’s civic\humanitarian actions and should emphasize the specific contributions and their impact. Additional letters will be discarded, in the order received.

6. Optionally:

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: Give date and place of birth, citizenship, education, positions held, honors, and participation in engineering societies. Attach any references from Who’s Who, Who’s Who in Engineering and/or American Men and Women of Science.

IMPORTANT: Nominations should be forwarded no later than March 15 of the year of the award to:

The Secretary Hoover Medal Board of Award ASME Two Park Avenue New York, NY 10016-5990

[NOTE: Nominations shall be carried forward and reconsidered by the Board for a period of three (3) consecutive years from the first submission of a fully completed submission including this Application and all accompanying and supporting documentation. Applications may be resubmitted for further consideration of the nominee for another three (3) year period thereafter based on submittal of a newly re-executed application form; other supporting documents do not have to be resubmitted]