Nominations will only be accepted from collegiate deans. Complete nominations must be submitted via a dedicated Qualtrics form: UI Distinguished Chair nomination, by noon on February 6, 2026; no extensions will be provided. Required materials may be submitted as individual documents or a single combined bookmarked PDF.

Completed nominations must include: 

From the nominee (submitted to the collegiate dean):

• Current CV
• A statement of no more than two pages describing the nominee’s contributions to the field and how their research, teaching, and/or scholarship has contributed to the institution, the State and the discipline.
• Three examples of scholarly products.

From the collegiate dean: 

• A nomination letter from the collegiate dean highlighting the nominee’s qualifications and describing the candidate’s scholarship, teaching, and/or service excellence and evidence of the potential for continued extraordinary productivity.
• Three letters of support from faculty who are familiar with the candidate’s contributions are to be solicited by the dean. One letter must be external to the university (The nominee may provide names and contact information of three to five faculty, both internal and external, who can provide letters of support). The letter should include the following:
  • A brief explanation of the professional relationship to the nominee.
  • Evidence of the quality of the candidate’s work and impact on the field.
  • Evidence of the candidate’s substantial recognition nationally and internationally among their peers. 

Nominations will be reviewed by the University Chair committee, which is composed of three tenured full professors, the president of Faculty Senate or their designee, and the associate provost for faculty. The selection committee will recommend awardees to the executive vice president and provost for final approval. 

Professors Saba Rasheed Ali and Paul A. Romitti have been named recipients of the University of Iowa Distinguished Chair in spring 2025.

Saba Rasheed Ali, College of Education

Ali, who joined the faculty at Iowa in 2003, is an internationally recognized scholar whose research and teaching have significantly advanced the fields of career development and counseling psychology. Her research focuses on career and workforce development, particularly in rural areas. She has led and researched successful career education programs, such as A Future in Iowa Career Education and Project HOPE, impacting more than 7,000 students in rural Iowa. 

She further contributed to mental health workforce development in rural Iowa through the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training grants and youth career development through funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act. She also earned several accolades for her work, including the Distinguished Professional Award from the Society for Vocational Psychology in 2024 and the Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Scholarship Award from the UI in 2017.

In her teaching, Ali connects work-related issues to community concerns, enabling future counseling psychologists to address workforce needs. Many of the doctoral students she has worked with stayed in Iowa to teach or practice psychology, addressing the mental health needs of local communities. As an administrator, she supports faculty and staff in their career development, fostering research in education that benefits communities around the world.

Paul A. Romitti, College of Public Health

Romitti, who joined the faculty at Iowa in 2000, is a world-renowned scholar in surveillance and interdisciplinary research of congenital and inherited disorders. Romitti directs the Iowa Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention, which investigates environmental factors and gene variants for several birth defects. In addition to funding from the center, Romitti has secured more than $40 million in external funding for his research and authored more than 280 publications. His work was recognized with the National Birth Defects Prevention Network Godfrey P. Oakley Jr. Award for significant lifetime contributions to the birth defects field.

In addition to his scholarship, Romitti has directed several graduate courses at Iowa and mentored more than 40 pre- and post-doctoral scholars. He has represented Iowa on advisory boards, working groups, steering committees, and expert panels for several national and international organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, International Agency for Research in Cancer, and the World Health Organization. 

Romitti also has served as the director of the Iowa Registry for Congenital and Inherited Disorders, the statewide surveillance program for birth defects and other congenital and inherited disorders, since 1999. In this role, he led program expansion to include public health surveillance for stillbirths and muscular dystrophies. The program serves as a model for other states establishing congenital and inherited disorders surveillance programs.