The Alicia Cascallar Award for an Outstanding Paper by an Early Career Scholar has been established to honor Alicia’s professional commitment and accomplishments and to continue her practice of mentoring and encouraging promising new scholars in the area of educational measurement.
The award will be given to an early career scholar for an outstanding paper presented at one of the three most recent NCME Annual Meetings.
The award will be presented at the NCME Annual Meeting. A cash award of $1,000, a commemorative plaque, and a waiver of NCME Annual Meeting registration fees will be provided as partial support for an early career member of NCME to travel to the NCME Annual Meeting.
2026 Award Details
Eligibility
To be eligible for the award, one must have presented a paper or been the first author of a paper presented at one of the three most recent NCME Annual Meetings (2022 , 2023*, 2024, 2025) in a paper session or as part of a symposium or panel discussion. The nominee must be an early career scholar, having received their doctoral degree within 5 years of the 2026 NCME Annual Meeting. In addition, the candidate must be a member of NCME or he/she must become a member by the time the award is presented at the 2026 NCME Annual Meeting.
*Uploaded to repository or presented in virtual session
Nomination
Nominations must include the following items:
- A letter of nomination from a professional colleague who is a member in good standing of NCME or self-nomination by a NCME member
- The candidate’s current curriculum vitae
- At least one letter of recommendation from someone who knows the candidate’s work; multiple recommendations are acceptable
- Both the nomination and the letter(s) of recommendation should list the reasons why the paper represents an important contribution to the field of applied measurement
- An electronic copy of the paper presented at NCME. Please do not submit subsequent versions (i.e., publication).
- For multi-authored papers, the candidate must be the first author or, if not the first author, be the presenter of the paper. The candidate must provide a statement that defines his/her unique contributions to the paper. All other co-authors must provide a statement indicating that these contributions were unique and added to the value of the paper.
Nominations should be submitted via email by January 9, 2026, to the Alicia Cascallar Award Committee Chair, Qi Dao (qdiao@ets.org), with cc to the NCME Awards Board Liaison, Sue Lottridge (sue.lottridge@pearson.com), and the NCME management office (ncme@ncme.org).
For more information, please review the Award Frequently Asked Questions or contact the committee chair.