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Home Distinguished Alumni Awards Distinguished Alumni Awards Nomination Information

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDS NOMINATION INFORMATION

Recognizing Our Alumni Successes

The University of Iowa Distinguished Alumni Awards Committee—which includes members of our Alumni Leadership Council—aims to recognize a broad range of qualified candidates who embody the university’s core values by honoring them with Distinguished Alumni Awards. The committee selects an annual recipient in each of the following categories:

  • The Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award recognizes graduates or former students who demonstrate significant accomplishments in their business or professional lives as well as distinguished service to their university, community, state, or nation.
  • The Distinguished Alumni Service Award recognizes graduates or former students who demonstrate specific and meritorious service to their university, community, state, or nation.
  • The Distinguished Alumni Hickerson Recognition Award recognizes graduates or former students for outstanding contributions to their alma mater. This award is named in honor of the late Loren Hickerson (40BA), the university’s first full-time alumni director and an ardent UI champion.
  • The Distinguished Recent Graduate Award recognizes graduates or former students, age 40 or younger at their time of nomination, for significant accomplishments in their business or professional lives as well as for distinguished service to their university, community, state, or nation.
  • The Distinguished Friend of the University Award recognizes individuals who are not alumni for specific and meritorious service that enhances and advances the university.
  • The Distinguished Faculty Award recognizes retired or former faculty for significant achievements and for specific meritorious service that enhances and advances the university. Nominees need not be alumni.
  • The Distinguished “Forevermore” Staff Award recognizes retired or former staff for significant achievements and for specific meritorious service that enhances and advances the university. Nominees need not be alumni.

NOMINATION FORMAT

Graduates, former students, faculty, staff, and friends of the University of Iowa may make nominations (the Distinguished Alumni Awards Committee reserves the right to reassign nomination categories, if deemed applicable). Nominators should submit the following:

  • Cover letter that states the nomination category, endorses the candidate’s qualifications, and highlights how the nominee embodies the UI's core values
  • Nominee's vita or professional résumé, including a current address
  • Three or more letters of recommendation from other individuals who support the nomination
  • Any additional information that would further substantiate the nomination

EXCLUSION FROM ELIGIBILITY

Current members of the University of Iowa Center for Advancement’s board of directors and staff, members of the Alumni Leadership Council, and current full‑time university faculty and staff are not eligible to receive these awards. Individuals currently in a position of elected or appointed office or known to be launching a campaign are also not eligible to receive these awards. All nominees must be living at the time of nomination and cannot have received a University of Iowa Distinguished Alumni Award in the same category in the past. Nominations by active Awards Committee members will not be reviewed until the member’s term has concluded on the committee. The Awards Committee reserves the right to consider and approve exceptions to the exclusions from eligibility.

AWARDS TIMELINE

Nominations for the 2026 awards will open in May 2025 and close on January 31, 2026. The Distinguished Alumni Awards Committee will meet in April 2026 to review all nominations and make the annual selections. Distinguished Alumni Awards will be presented at a special ceremony on the Friday before the University of Iowa's Homecoming (Fall 2026).

Submit an Online Nomination

MAIL NOMINATIONS TO:

The University of Iowa Center for Advancement
Distinguished Alumni Awards
One West Park Road
Iowa City, Iowa 52244

For more information, email Nici Bontrager or call 319-467-3607.

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Old Gold: Religious Studies' Long Association with UI

The UI is home to the nation's longest-standing Department of Religious Studies at a public university. PHOTO: F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs, Faculty series, UI Archives Rufus H. Fitzgerald, an early proponent of the School of Religion, circa 1930. Editor's note: In Old Gold, University archivist David McCartney looks back at the UI's history and tradition through materials housed in University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries. Religious education was not new to the State University of Iowa when the School of Religion was established in 1927. Attendance at vespers, for example, was expected of students for many years during the 19th century, and courses pertaining to the study of certain religions were offered for credit during the early 20th century before the formation of the school. PHOTO: 1960 Hawkeye yearbook, UI Archives The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's visit to the Iowa Memorial Union on Nov. 11, 1959, was sponsored by the School of Religion. What was new was the concept of organizing such a formalized degree-granting program at a public university. Iowa was the first such institution in the U.S. to do so. Today, the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as the school is now known, ranks among the nation's 25 leading programs, according to theologydegrees.org. Before going any further, Old Gold should clear up a common misconception. The university has not been, nor is it now, the home of a theological seminary. Instead of offering, say, a master of divinity degree, the university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in religious studies. The distinction is important, particularly in the context of a tax-supported institution. As Stow Persons wrote in The University of Iowa in the Twentieth Century: An Institutional History, "Religious courses simply assured a place for religious studies alongside the various secular disciplines. ... The [approach] adopted to justify religious courses in a public university?studying about religion?tacitly acknowledged the not so subtle distinction between religion as lived and religion as perceived." To some, the coexistence of science and religion at an institution of higher learning may seem paradoxical. Since its inception, however, the Department of Religious Studies has maintained its role of service in the realm of research and instruction. This was, in essence, how the university's administration envisioned the program when President Walter Jessup (34LITTD) appointed a Committee on Religious Education in 1921. The committee secured funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and other private sources to launch the school, with direction provided by Rufus Fitzgerald, secretary of the campus YMCA chapter. (Fitzgerald would later serve as director of the Iowa Memorial Union and the School of Fine Arts.) Its first director was M. Willard Lampe, who served from 1927 to 1954. PHOTO: F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs, Faculty series, UI Archives M. Willard Lampe, the first director of the School of Religion, 1927. In its early years, the program relied upon sectarian gifts to financially support faculty representing Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths, a practice intended to maintain the appearance of separation of church and state. The practice, however, brought its own set of problems. Funding from outside sources in some cases meant that donors could assume responsibility for the hiring and firing of faculty with no approval or participation by the college or administration. Critics also expressed concern about the consistency of faculty and whether they met the academic qualifications that would be expected in any other setting on campus. By about 1940, all faculty and staff in the school were paid by university funds, or were supported by private funds with the understanding that the school would exercise its authority to hire and grant tenure. Endowed chairs or funded fellowships now account for four of the program's 16 active faculty. Today the Department of Religious Studies is interdisciplinary, offering a broad and diverse curriculum of over 120 courses at the undergraduate level alone. They entail ethics, popular culture, environmentalism, human rights, gender and sexuality, politics, and anthropology, as well as its roots: studies of all major world religions. Learn more: clas.uiowa.edu/religion/

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Volunteering is one of the many ways to stay connected and involved with the UI—whether it's in the classroom, at the hospital, or serving as a mentor.

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NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity that works to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

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