Paul J. Olscamp Research Award

Named after the eleventh president of Western, the Paul J. Olscamp Research Award goes to a faculty member from either the College of Humanities and Social Sciences or the College of Science and Engineering in recognition of their impressive record of achievement in scholarship and research during their time at Western.

*Please Note: Only Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, or Professors are eligible for this award. (Instructors, Lecturers, Senior Instructors are not eligible. Please check the staff directory for faculty titles.)

Nominations for the 2026 Paul J. Olscamp Research Award are now OPEN. Please use the online WWU Faculty Award Nomination Form to submit a nomination by the January 23, 2026 deadline.

Selection Criteria

  • Only Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, or Professors are eligible for this award. Tenure is not a requirement, but the candidate must be a tenure-track faculty member having completed at least three (3) full years of service at Western. Visiting faculty, non-tenure track faculty, and part-time faculty are not eligible.
  • No person shall receive this award more than once.
  • Only WWU faculty members, department chairs, and academic deans may nominate their faculty colleagues for a Scholarship/Research award. Nominees will be contacted and given instructions for submitting materials to the award committee.
  • This is a research award. Materials submitted should speak to the candidate’s research and scholarship abilities and include the following:
    • Current vita
    • Supporting research and scholarship materials from the candidate covering the last three (3) years, but no more than five (5) years.
    • The candidate may provide a summary comprising up to three (3) pages describing aspects of his/her/their research and scholarship not covered by the requested materials.
    • The candidate will solicit up to five (5) letters of support, submitted electronically to the Dean’s Office*. Letters should register the impact of the candidate’s research in his/her/their field and reasonably represent the candidate’s department or field.

Award/Recognition

The award recipient will be presented with a Western medallion award at the Celebration of Excellence Awards in May. This award also includes a payment of $2,500, made possible by the Western Washington University Foundation. (Please note: for each payment, the University also contributes approximately $1,553.66 for tax related deductibles plus benefits for a total expenditure of approximately $3,553 per award.)

Award Administration

College of Humanities and Social Sciences and College of Science and Engineering Dean’s Offices (rotating).

The 2026 award will be facilitated by the College of Science and Engineering. Please contact the CSE Dean's Office if you have questions about the Paul J. Olscamp Research Award.

Nomination Process

Only WWU faculty members, department chairs, and academic deans may nominate their faculty colleagues for a Scholarship/Research award. Nominations for the 2026 award are now OPEN. Please follow the link to the nomination form listed under the award description above to nominate a colleague by the January 23, 2026 deadline.

2025

Dr. Clint Spiegel wearing a navy blazer and WWU award medallion

P. Clint Spiegel, Jr. - Chemistry

P. Clint Spiegel, Jr. is a professor of Biochemistry at Western, where his student-focused research has been to leverage biochemical and structural biological approaches to study the structure and function of proteins that impact human health and disease. He is internationally recognized as an expert in blood coagulation proteins and protein complexes related to hemophilia.

Clint’s research group has been largely supported by the National Institutes of Health, and they’ve been awarded over $2.5 million and published 30 peer-reviewed papers since joining WWU. Recently, he was selected as a “State of the Art” honored speaker at the annual meeting of the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. Previously, Clint was selected for the Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Student Mentoring and named a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar for his work mentoring over 90 undergraduate and 19 graduate research assistants.

Clint received his B.S. degree with honors in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University and his Ph.D. in Biomolecular Structure and Design through the Biochemistry Department at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Before joining the faculty at WWU, he was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Past Awardees

1 awardee(s) for this year

2024 Awardees

Dr. Tesla Monson wears a vibrant turquoise blazer and a WWU award medallion

Tesla Monson - Anthropology

Associate Professor of Anthropology Tesla A. Monson is an internationally recognized, award-winning scholar whose writing has been viewed and shared by millions of people worldwide. She earned a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.A. from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  

At Western, Tesla runs the Primate Evolution Lab; her research and teaching focus on the evolution of reproduction and the growth of the skeletal system in living and fossil primates. Her research has been met with exceptional federal and state financial support, bringing in more than $1.1 million in the last five years. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in top journals, with press features and international news articles in Science and Inverse Magazine, and is regularly invited to speak about her research at institutions worldwide. Her 2023 piece in the popular research news outlet The Conversation was published in English and French and recorded more than 34,000 readers over the first six months.

Tesla is also an editor at the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, the top journal in her field. In May, she accepted a publishing deal with Flatiron Books to write a book on the evolution of pregnancy.