Alumni & Friends
Campaign
Magazine
Give
Mobile Icon for Homepage
Alumni & Friends
Campaign
Iowa Magazine
Give to Iowa
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 criteria in the given nomination category.

The Awards Committee will review these initial submissions. For those submissions the Committee wishes to advance to the next round, requests will be made for the following additional information (from the initial nominator):

  • 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.
  • Previously held positions.
  • Accomplishments.
  • Other awards received from University of Iowa.

Nominators may choose to submit all of this information with the initial cover letter. This is not a guarantee of the nomination moving to the second round.

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.

Join an Alumni Network
Make a Gift
Join our Email List
Iowa Magazine
Explore the latest stories from Iowa Magazine.
Related Content
Iowa Alumna and Choreographer Doesn't Dance Around Tough Issues

New York company founder Sydnie L. Mosley sparks social justice conversations through inclusive dance.

Iowa’s New Health Sciences Academic Building Opens Doors

The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders?one of the UI?s leading programs?welcomes students and patients into the new west campus facility.

Old Gold: Farewell to Seashore Hall

The longtime multipurpose building served as the university's first teaching hospital. F.W. Kent Collection (RG 30.0001.001), University Archives, the University of Iowa Libraries University Hospital, early 1900s Old Gold's elementary school in the 1960s was crowded and filled with baby boomers. At the aging 1913 Washington Grade School in Charles City, Iowa, we had a multipurpose room with a variety of monikers, depending on its use at the moment: the brown-bag lunch room, the music lesson room, the indoor recess room, the PTA meeting room. F.W. Kent Collection (RG 30.0001.001), University Archives, the University of Iowa Libraries Nurse working in hydrotherapy, 1910 Old Gold has his own memory of that room. As a worried fifth grader, he had a talk with his vocal music teacher early one morning when she assured him he would be fine in the upcoming spring concert. (Old Gold had a bad case of stage fright at the time and still gets nervous, but thanks to Miss Esther Charlotte Smith, those fears aren't as strong as they once were.) Why muse upon a multipurpose room? The reason is sad and simple: The remaining portion of Seashore Hall, a longtime multipurpose building for the University of Iowa, will soon be demolished. The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, long overdue for updated facilities, is scheduled to begin classes in its new building at the site in the 2020 spring semester. The Iowa Board of Regents has approved the final stages of demolition of the aging Seashore?a process that began in early 2018. The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences will, at last, be situated in a facility that match its outstanding reputation. In its original state, Seashore Hall was known as University Hospital, the university's first building constructed to serve as its hospital, in 1899. Even at that time, the location was historic: Mechanics' Academy, site of the university's first classes when it opened its doors to students in 1855, was situated here. The original hospital was a 65-bed unit that served two missions: healing and instruction. In doing so, the facility laid the groundwork for today's University of Iowa Health Care, a nationally recognized public teaching hospital. By the early 1920s, it became clear the medical campus had outgrown its original three-block area downtown. In 1929, with the opening of General Hospital west of the Iowa River, the old hospital was renamed East Hall. Over time, a variety of university departments and offices occupied the structure, including journalism, sociology, psychology, computing services, and audio-visual services. For a brief time in the 1940s it even housed Old Gold's office, the University Archives. In 1981, East Hall was again renamed, this time in honor of Carl Seashore, who served as dean of the Graduate College from 1908 to 1937. F.W. Kent Collection (RG 30.0001.001), University Archives, the University of Iowa Libraries Nurse bringing patient dinner tray in a private room at the University Hospital, early 1920s Seashore Hall underwent numerous additions, subtractions, and changes to its original design over the decades?so much so that a modern-day observer might think that it was designed by a committee that couldn't quite agree on a consistent appearance. Indeed, according to John Beldon Scott and Rodney Lehnertz's (02MBA) informative book, The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture (University of Iowa Press, 2006), "the original all-brick, stripped-down, Beaux-Arts building of 1899 faced Jefferson Street rather than Iowa Avenue and was constructed on a red-brick base with buff-colored walls and an argyle pattern in red and beige brick on the top two floors." In just a few years, however, this orientation was changed toward Iowa Avenue, with new features designed by Proudfoot, Bird, and Rawson, the Des Moines-based architectural firm that designed other campus facilities during this period. The loss of one of the university's great "multipurpose rooms" is bittersweet to Old Gold, who laments the imminent destruction of one of campus' oldest existing structures. Old Gold, however, also acknowledges that such things are often inevitable and is eager to see the newly designed replacement when it's completed. From there, new memories of life-defining conversations will emerge, much like Old Gold's early-morning meeting with Miss Smith over 50 years ago. 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. Find more UI history stories in our Old Gold archive.

UIVA Alumni Organization

The UIVA Alumni Organization serves and connects alumni and students who share the common bond of military service.

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies in accordance with our Privacy Statement unless you have disabled them in your browser.

About Us
Careers
Update Your Information
Contact Us
Privacy Statement
Give Now
© The University of Iowa Center for Advancement

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.

A Gallup world-class workplace for employee engagement.