AWARD CRITERIA
The Educational Impact Award recognizes excellence in contributing to the teaching mission in strategic management. It will be given to an individual who has made an exemplary contribution to quality and innovation in the teaching of strategic management, either through their own teaching and mentoring activities and/or by empowering other teachers with innovations and high-quality teaching materials.
Nominees for this award will be judged according to the following criteria:
- Innovation in the teaching of strategic management (e.g. new pedagogies, new media for learning and knowledge sharing)
- Development and dissemination of teaching materials, such as texts, case studies and digital materials
- Writing and publishing on pedagogy
- Evidence of excellence in teaching at their home institution and other places they have taught (e.g. teaching awards, reference letters from administrators or peers, etc.)
The Award Recipient will be recognized on the SMS Website and at the SMS Annual Conference, as well as invited to participate in the SMS Awards & Honors Webinar Series.
The recipient of this award is selected by a sub-committee appointed by the SMS Awards & Honors Committee, and will include leadership of the SMS Teaching Community.
Nominations are invited from any member of the SMS and should include:
- A nomination letter of not more than two pages in length specifically addressing the nominee’s achievements vis-à-vis the above criteria
- Two additional letters of recommendation for the nominated individual
- A full current CV for the nominated individual
SMS Educational Impact Award 2025 Recipient:
Frank T. Rothaermel
Frank T. Rothaermel was nominated for this award by Olga Petričević (University of Calgary) and Manuela N. Hoehn-Weiss (Oregon State University) for his influence on the teaching of strategic management in business schools around the world and for his impact on the intellectual agenda of the field. The SMS Awards & Honors Committee evaluated many deserving candidates for this award and selected Frank because of his contributions to strategic management through textbooks, cases, and tools, as well as the impact of his teaching and as a mentor for other exceptional teachers.
About Frank:
Frank T. Rothaermel is a Regents’ Professor, holds the McDonough Chair, and is a Sloan Industry Studies Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Based on 40 academic articles, Thomson Reuters identified Frank as one of the “world’s most influential scientific minds” based on papers published in the top 1% of citations; Scholar GPS places him in the 0.5% in terms of scholarly impact. Frank’s work has been cited 26,500 times, according to Google Scholar. He authored the widely used textbook “Strategic Management” (7th edition, 2026), with translations into Greek, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. He has written 70 case studies distributed by Harvard Business Publishing, with 34 achieving “bestseller” status.
Award Past Recipients
Anita McGahan, 2018