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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).

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: Answering the Call

A century ago, a UI engineering professor built bridges in Iowa City and on the battlefields of Europe. F.W. Kent Collection of Photographs (RG 30.0001.001), University Archives, the University of Iowa Libraries Left: Maj. Byron James Lambert in January 1918 at a rifle range in Camp Glen Burnie, Maryland. Right: Lambert, a professor of structural engineering, is pictured in 1912. 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. When Byron James Lambert joined the State University of Iowa?s College of Engineering faculty as an assistant instructor in 1902 at age 28, he probably had no idea that his career would later?take him to wartime France. Indeed, the need overseas for U.S. military officers and soldiers trained in structural and civil engineering was sudden and unprecedented in 1917. Early that year, the U.S. formally entered the Great War and, at about the same time, established the Student Army Training Corps, the forerunner to today?s Reserve Officers? Training Corps. SATC programs were established at scores of colleges and universities across the U.S., including the State University of Iowa. The Byron James Lambert file, Staff and Faculty Vertical File (RG 01.0015.003), University Archives, The University of Iowa Libraries Maj. Lambert's budget notes detailing battalion supply needs, 1918. The new and frightening technologies of war unleashed at that time?bombing attacks by air, tanks, chemical warfare, and flamethrowers, among other weapons?demanded an improved network of roads in western Europe to permit critical transport of personnel and supplies. Lambert, by now a professor of structural engineering and head of the department, understood this and enlisted in the U.S. Army in November 1917. Commissioned as major of engineers, he was assigned to the 23rd Engineer Regiment in charge of the Third Battalion. Correspondence and other documents in Professor Lambert?s biographical file in the University Archives confirm that his 10 months in Europe, from March 1918 until his honorable discharge in January 1919, entailed critical duties as part of the American Expeditionary Force. First stationed at Saint-Nazaire in France, he was in charge of road development and maintenance in Base Section No. 1 in the western part of the country, and soon oversaw railroad and warehouse construction at Montierchaume. He supervised road and bridge work near Verdun, and he was chief bridge engineer during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel. In his nine-page memoir of his service, also at the archives, Maj. Lambert recalled difficult, tedious work carried out by him and the men he commanded: ?After they had marched a few kilometers, say, to a big stone quarry, they had been handed a pick or ax or shovel or wheelbarrow, and told to get busy. Hot? Yes, real summer weather. Water? Very little, if any. Blisters? Oh, yes, real genuine blisters. Ask any returned soldier you meet what he thinks of the rest camps in France, especially at the Base Ports.? Maj. Lambert returned to Iowa City and civilian life in early 1919, and he served as head of the College of Engineering?s Department of Civil Engineering until his retirement in 1940. He continued to teach until about one year before his death in 1952 at age 78. We can sense Byron James Lambert?s impact on our campus?today. Before he entered military service in the summer of 1917, he designed and oversaw construction of the three-arch Iowa Avenue bridge spanning the Iowa River west of Old Capitol. Except for some rehabilitative work in 1985, the bridge remains largely in its original form today. His legacy is also present in France, where citizens today use a road and rail system enhanced by his design and construction skills a century ago. ? Maj. Lambert's budget notes detailing battalion supply needs, 1918.

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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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