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The Kenneth Harwood Outstanding Dissertation Award is an academic prize awarded each year by the Broadcast Education Association for the best doctoral dissertation in field of broadcasting and electronic media. The prize was established by Kenneth Harwood, Professor at the University of Houston and a former President of the BEA. The award offers $1,000 for the outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in broadcasting and electronic media. The award was established through gifts started by Professor Harwood and a donation from a friend of BEA.

Origin
The award has been named after Professor Kenneth Harwood (1915–2009), one of those who made systems development a science. professor Börje was a Swedish engineer and computer scientist, and Emeritus Professor of Business Information Systems at the Department of Computer and Systems Science, Stockholm University and Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Börje Langefors was a pioneer of IT and one of the initiators of ‘Informatics’ as an academic area of study. He was the first IT professor in Sweden and one of the first in the world. Börje contributed strongly to put Sweden on the international IT map and brought into a focus in particular to the user's role in data processing. Börje Langefors brought more than 20 graduate students to degree most of which today are professors who in turn have brought their students to graduates.

Award criteria
The following quality criteria are applied for the evaluation of individual doctoral thesis:


 * Relevance: Articulate, well-defined and well-motivated research question(s)
 * Articulate and well-reflected research design
 * Comprehensiveness: Chosen and used well described theory base
 * Well described empirical base
 * Validity of knowledge (empirically and theoretically well-grounded)
 * Contribution validity and durability (abstraction) to further research
 * Innovative value in knowledge contributions
 * Independence (of author's own contribution)
 * Communicability: Clarity, transparency and conceptual clarity
 * Internal coherence: holistic and coherent argument
 * Subject (IS field) congruency
 * Ability to serve as a 'Role model'
 * International exposure /review

Prize Committee
Every year in spring (usually in May), a prize committee assesses the theses submitted by the universities/institutions in Sweden and nominates the best dissertation, which is finally announced in connection with SISA's annual conference. Information about this conference can be found here. The members of Committee for Börje Langefors Award 2011-2012 were:
 * Professor Rikard Lindgren, University of Gothenburg
 * Professor Anne Persson, University of Skövde
 * Professor Goran Goldkuhl, Linköping University
 * Professor Åke Grönlund, Örebro university
 * Professor Pär Ågerfalk, Uppsala university

Börje Langefors Awards during the period 2011-2015 are sponsored by Nethouse and Sitevision