Award Guidelines

Mendel and the Augustinian Community of St. Thomas Monastery in Brno.  The community included philosophers, composers and scientists.  Mendel is standing, second from the right, holding his favorite flower, the fuchsia. 

The Villanova University Mendel Medal was established and awarded to outstanding scientists who have done much by their painstaking work to advance the cause of science, and, by their lives and their standing before the world as scientists, have demonstrated that between true science and true religion there is no intrinsic conflict.

The Villanova University Mendel Medal shall be conferred once each year, but it need not be conferred annually. An Advisory Committee, chaired by the Assistant to the President, shall recommend candidates for the Medal to the President of the University. The final selection and approval of candidates for the Medal shall rest with the President and the Board of Trustees.

The Advisory Committee shall meet at least once a year to consider candidates and to recommend to the President as to whether or not the award is to be made, and the candidate to whom it is to be made.

Detailed Guidelines

In making final decisions as to the awarding of the Mendel Medal to individual candidates, the Advisory Committee shall be guided by the following principles:

It will be awarded for distinguished service in advancing the cause of science:

• (a) for some special work in any scientific subject that is considered of sufficient importance, or for any distinguished work in the Life Sciences;
• (b) for discovery or original research adding to the sum of human knowledge, irrespective of commercial value; and
• (c) for meritorious inventions, discoveries, improvements in scientific processes, methods or devices.

It shall not be awarded in absentia.

• (a) Announcement of the award shall be made ordinarily during the latter part of November, but the actual awarding of the Medal shall take place, with appropriate ceremony, in the latter part of the fall semester of the following year.
• (b) Special circumstances, however, may make it advisable that either one or both, announcement and conferral take place at other times.