24 Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards

The CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards are presented for outstanding dissertations written by scholars who earned their doctorate in the previous two years. Awards are given in two broad fields each year. The 2024 fields are: 1) Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering and 2) Social Sciences. Each member university may nominate one individual in each broad field. Each nominated dissertation should represent original work making an unusually significant contribution to the discipline. Both methodological and substantive quality will be judged.

For more information, see here: https://apps.grad.illinois.edu/fellowship-finder/SearchResult/Fellowship/2635

Award Amount 

Two awards, each consisting of an honorarium of $2,000 and a certificate of citation, will be presented at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools, December 2024, in St. Louis, Missouri.  Reasonable travel expenses of the recipients will be paid.

Eligibility

To be eligible, the effective date of degree award, or the completion of doctoral degree requirements and dissertation, must be in the period of July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2024, inclusive, for each nominee selected. Doctorates must be awarded in one of the eligible fields:

• The following list, although not all-inclusive, illustrates the fields considered as Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering: mathematics, statistics, computer sciences, data processing, systems analysis, chemistry, earth sciences, physics, geology, meteorology, astronomy, metallurgy, geophysics, pharmaceutical chemistry; aeronautical, architectural, biomedical, ceramic, chemical, civil, and electrical engineering sciences; environmental health engineering; geological, mechanical, mining, nuclear, and petroleum engineering.     

• If a dissertation is multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary in nature, a significant portion of the work must be comprised of at least one of the 2024 fields of competition.

• The dissertation must currently appear in the ProQuest database. There are no exceptions to this requirement.

Students at UIUC must be nominated by their departments for the campus-level round of competition, and each department is limited to one nomination.

Application Materials

Please submit all application materials (not including letters) as one PDF to cs-awards@mx.uillinois.edu. The file should be named as follows: LastName, FirstName - CS - ProQuest2024. Please have letter writers submit their letters in PDF format directly to cs-awards@mx.uillinois.edu.

The PDF should contain the following documents, arranged in the following order:

• Cover page listing the following:

  • Department.

  • Confirmation that the dissertation appears in the ProQuest database. ("I confirm that my dissertation appears in the ProQuest database.")

  • Nominee information:

    • Name

    • UIN

    • Email

    • Phone

    • Mailing address

    • Dissertation Title

    • Current position

    • Current affiliation/employer

• Abstract of dissertation. The abstract should be no more than 5 pages, double-spaced, with 1 inch margins and 12 point font. Up to 5 additional pages of appendices containing nontextual material, such as charts or tables, may be included as well. Pages should be numbered, and each page should bear the name of the applicant.

• Three letters of reference evaluating the significance and quality of the dissertation. The first letter should be from the applicant's dissertation advisor. The second should be from a member of the applicant's dissertation committee. The third can be from a person of the applicant's choice. Please have letter writers submit their letters in PDF format directly to cs-awards@mx.uillinois.edu.

• CV (maximum 5 pages).
  
  

An internal competition will be held and a CS nominee selected by the CS Graduate Awards Committee. Then, a committee assembled by the Graduate College will review the nominations and select one from each of the two eligible fields to represent the University of Illinois in the national competition.