Distinguished Service Award

Since 2003, the Distinguished Service to SSA Award has honored individuals for their outstanding service to SSA.

Past recipients have devoted their time and talents to SSA publications, the preservation of SSA history and other important Society work that helps advance our mission.

Awardees become Honorary Members of the Society.

Award Criteria

This award honors outstanding service to SSA.

Award Eligibility

Any person may be nominated for this award with the exception of any individual who is a member, member-elect or officer of the Board of Directors at the time of the nomination deadline. There is no restriction on the number of such awards that may be given in any year.

Nomination Procedure

Any SSA member, who is eligible to submit a nomination, may nominate a candidate for this award. One two-page nomination letter must be submitted. Letters of support are optional. Any unsuccessful nomination may be considered again in the following year’s award cycle without resubmission of the nomination package if requested by a nominator before 30 September annual deadline. To be reconsidered in subsequent years (beyond the year immediately following the original nomination) a new nomination package must be submitted. The Executive Director will contact nominators via email prior to 30 September to confirm willingness for reconsideration of a package for a second year.

A signed nominator disclosure form submitted by the chief nominator must be included with every submission. Click here to complete the Ethics Disclosure Form for Nominators.

Awardee Selection

The Awardee is selected by the Board by a three-fourths vote.

Deadline and More Details

Nominations for all SSA awards should be sent to the SSA Secretary by 30 September. Electronic submissions should be e-mailed in .TXT, .PDF or .DOC files to awards@seismosoc.org.

For more information, see the SSA Honors Program guide. Questions may be directed to the Chair of the Honors Committee, Heather DeShon (hdeshon@smu.edu). Please list Distinguished Service Award – Question as the subject line.

2024 Distinguished Service Award Recipient

Douglas Dreger

Douglas Scott Dreger, a professor of geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley is the recipient of the 2024 Distinguished Service Award (DSA) at the 2024 SSA Annual Meeting. Dreger served as SSA Publications Committee chair between 2016 and 2022.

Dreger “instigated a broad range of initiatives intended to reinforce the reputation and financial performance of SSA’s publications at a time of rapid change in the publishing landscape,” said past SSA President John Townend, in his nomination of Dreger for the award.

Among Dreger’s accomplishments during his tenure was the establishment of The Seismic Record (TSR), the Society’s first fully open access journal and the appointment of Keith Koper as TSR’s inaugural editor-in-chief. Dreger also oversaw the revision of publication policies for all three journals, including the author sharing policy, preprint policy and supplementary content policy, to ensure the rigor and standards necessary to maintain a healthy and navigable publishing program overall.

“I am deeply honored to have been awarded the SSA Distinguished Service Award for my efforts as Publication Committee Chair. BSSA was the first journal I read for a project as an undergraduate working for a geotechnical company. Years later I published my first scientific paper in BSSA. Subsequently, a majority of my life’s work has been published in SSA journals,” Dreger said.

“Serving on the Board of Directors and being asked to chair the Publication Committee was challenging, rewarding and one of the highlights of my career. The scientific publication landscape is rapidly changing and SSA is adjusting and innovating, while maintaining the highest level of standard in editorial review, and scientific rigor of the published works. We can all be proud of this as members, authors, reviewers and editors,” he added.