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L.B. Sims Outstanding Master's Thesis Award


Leslie B. Sims,
former Graduate College Dean and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, The University of Iowa

In recognition of contributions to The University of Iowa and to graduate education nationwide, the Graduate College has established the L.B. Sims Outstanding Master's Thesis Award.

Leslie B. Sims was Graduate College Dean, Associate Provost for Graduate Education, and Vice Provost at The University of Iowa (1991-2001). He went on to national-level work with the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in Washington, D.C. (2001-2006) as Dean-in-residence, a position from which he recently retired. While at CGS, he focused on the Ford and Sloan funded Professional Master's Projects and has just completed a book on the professional master's degree.

This award recognizes and rewards distinguished scholarship and research at the master's level. Each year's winner is also Iowa's nomination for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Outstanding Thesis Award.

The L. B. Sims Outstanding Master's Thesis Award is awarded annually to recognize the excellent scholarship and research that is carried out by University of Iowa graduate students pursuing Master's degrees—a group with fewer opportunities for such recognition than for students pursuing doctoral degrees.

The winner of the L. B. Sims Award receives a $500 honorarium and a certificate from the Graduate College. In addition, the Graduate College submits the winner's thesis as the institution's nomination for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Distinguished Thesis Award.

MAGS selects two winners, who will each receive $500 and will be recognized at the MAGS Annual Meeting on April 21, 2010 in Cincinnati, OH. The Graduate College also will recognize the award winner at the Graduate Student Award Recognition Reception March 26, 2010.

Nomination Process

Nominations for the 2009-10 award are due Wednesday, October 21, 2009.

  • Nominated theses should represent highly original research that makes a significant contribution to their field.
  • Nominations will be accepted from any discipline in which the University of Iowa offers a master's degree. However, original works accepted by the University "in lieu of thesis" (e.g. works of art) may not be nominated.
  • Each department may nominate one candidate to the Graduate College.
  • Each nominee must have been awarded the Master's degree within the calendar year from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009.
  • Because the intent of the competition is to recognize scholarship by students who are pursuing their first graduate research degree, individuals who received a Ph.D. (or comparable research degree) in any discipline prior to the writing of the Master's thesis are not eligible. However, recipients of a first professional degree awarded prior to the writing of the thesis may be nominated.

A subcommittee of the Graduate Council will select the Sims Award winner, who will then become the University's nominee for the for the MAGS prize.

Nomination Materials

Nominations should be sent via email attachment to kathy-klein@uiowa.edu, with the following items attached as PDF documents:

  • An electronic copy of the thesis.
  • An electronic copy of the abstract. The abstract – describing the research and its significance – must not exceed 300 words and should contain the title of the thesis and the name of the author but not the name of the institution.
  • A letter from the thesis supervisor (signed and scanned as a PDF).
  • An electronic copy of the student's curriculum vitae.

Last Year's Sims Award Winner

In the 2008-09 Sims Outstanding Master's Thesis Award competition, the winner was Katherine Furgol of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. The thesis title was "Trend Estimation Under NCLB: A Novel Method for Estimating Trends from Censored Assessment Data" and the advisors were Professors Dale Zimmerman and Andrew Ho.

For any questions about the Sims competition, please contact Dan Berkowitz, Associate Dean, at 335-2136 (dan-berkowitz@uiowa.edu) or Kathy Klein at 335-3492 (kathy-klein@uiowa.edu).