The University of Sydney provides many awards to recognize academic excellence across a range of areas, some requiring applications while others do not. All prizes are recorded on your transcript and carry prestige; awards may be determined based on criteria including academic merit, performance in specific units/programs/disciplines as well as achievement within them; literary prizes may require applicants submitting written work (such as an essay or poem) on a certain topic for consideration.

Sir Sidney Cox believed that one of the primary tasks of college educators was to promote and foster excellent writing across both undergraduate and graduate classes. The prize, established in his name, seeks to recognize outstanding student writing projects that meet Sir Sidney’s stringent standards for excellence as outlined in his book Indirections for Those Who Want to Write. It will be awarded annually.

This award recognizes an acclaimed work on Jewish history and culture written from original research, contributing substantially to literature on this subject matter. Suitable for classroom use as well as scholars alike, the winner receives both a cash award and certificate for their accomplishment.

Dr. Edward Jones-Imhotep of York University historian has won the Society for the History of Technology’s esteemed Sidney Edelstein Prize – becoming the first scholar from a Canadian institution ever honored with this accolade over its fifty-year history. Jones-Imhotep received this honor for his 2018 book entitled: The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in Cold War Canada.

This annual award honors outstanding early achievement and promise in graduate study, intended to encourage and support all levels of study. Established by Dr. Sidney Louis Wagman ’51’s family in honor of their shared devotion to high ideals, the prize provides recognition of both academic excellence as well as an incentive for future achievements in graduate education.

This award, now in its 20th year, recognizes an article resulting from dissertation research submitted by graduate or advanced undergraduate students and will be published in Church History.

The monthly prize recognizes an outstanding piece of journalism that illuminates social and economic injustice. Submissions must be received by the last day of every month; winning entries will be selected by a panel of scholars in relevant fields; all submissions will be read and discussed before selection is made; should none of the submissions meet quality thresholds, the prize may not be awarded; however AJL is proud to support this endeavor to shed light on critical issues of today.

“Big data” has quickly become a buzzword in science and daily life, yet in comparison with global Facebook interactions analysis, SGP data is relatively small. Luckily, SGP data does not require complicated or costly software – rather the majority of work involved in SGP analysis occurs during data preparation prior to performing analyses with tools that utilize simple relational databases for this process.

This database, known as sgpData, serves as the central repository of state-level SGP data. Access can be gained to this data via BAA Secure Site with various options available for viewing SGP information at both student and school levels.

SGPs provide a useful snapshot of student performance across several years. Such snapshots can assist in understanding long-term trends in student achievement, pinpointing specific areas for improvement and comparing individual schools against the state average. Furthermore, SGPs enable educators to monitor students’ development over time and guide instructional decisions accordingly.

As such, SGP data graphical presentations offer teachers and parents an effective means of conveying important information regarding student progress. For instance, percentile ranks give educators and parents insight into a child’s academic peers and represent how well their progress compared to them is progressing; providing clear communications on these figures that most can understand.

A student’s current SGP is calculated using their scores from both their most recent assessment and one or more previous assessments from various testing windows. While their most recent assessment always serves as the foundation for this calculation, adding additional assessments allows us to account for any variations in student performance more accurately.

At the state level, median SGPs typically lie around 50 since norms are usually established using only current year students as evidence. However, in certain instances they may differ due to slight misfitting between student bodies, assignment of Highest Obtained Scale Score (HOSS) students to an SGP of 99 or other factors like using baseline methods to calculate SGPs.

SGPs are calculated and reported on an individual student level, marking a major departure from past reporting methods and creating new challenges for educators, parents, and policymakers. Of particular note are changes to how data are accessed, displayed, and interpreted by the public.

An SGP is an exciting development, but educators must first become proficient at reading and interpreting its growth data before using it for educator evaluation purposes. The guides below aim to assist educators with this tool so that they can maximize its educational benefits as effectively as possible.