The Brenda H. Loyd Outstanding Dissertation Award honors an outstanding dissertation in the field of educational measurement.
The winner of the award will receive $1,000 and a commemorative plaque from NCME. In addition, the advisor or committee chair for the award-winning dissertation will receive a letter of congratulations.
2026 Award Details
Eligibility
Nominations will be accepted for dissertations completed between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2025. The author of the dissertation as well as the author’s advisor must both be members of NCME.
Nomination
Nominations must include the following:
- A letter of nomination from the author’s advisor;
- A summary of the dissertation research (up to 10 double-spaced pages) that includes sections that describe the rationale for the study, brief literature review, research questions, methodology, results, and conclusions;
- A copy of the dissertation; and
- A statement from the graduate school or a copy of the diploma confirming the date of completion and acceptance of the dissertation.
The nominator and the nominee agree that this work will not be nominated for a similar award in AERA that will be given during the 2025 NCME Annual Meeting.
The submission deadline for the 2025 Brenda H. Loyd Award is January 9, 2026. All award materials must be submitted via email to the Brenda H. Loyd Award Committee Chair, Kaiwen Man (kman@ua.edu), with cc to the NCME Awards Board Liaison, Sue Lottridge (sue.lottridge@pearson.com), and the NCME management office (ncme@ncme.org). For additional information, please contact the committee chair.