The ornithological societies sponsoring NAOC-V are offering current and recently graduated students opportunities to compete for presentation awards in a single combined program. Students wishing to be considered for a presentation award will need to submit an application through process similar to, but separate from, the one for travel awards. The Student Presentation Awards Committee (SPAC) expects to distribute at least 19 awards, sponsored financially by at least eight of the societies participating in NAOC-V. The committee anticipates giving awards for presentations in both oral and poster categories of contributed papers, roughly in proportion to the number of finalists in each category. In other words, placement of a student's presentation by the Scientific Program Committee as either a oral or poster presentation will not greatly influence the chances of winning.
The SPAC offers the following advance guidance for prospective student presenters:
To be eligible to apply for award consideration, the individual must be:
• a current or continuing student at the undergraduate, Masters, or PhD level at the time of application. Recent PhD recipients (degree awarded after 1 July 2011) will also be eligible, as long as the presentation concerns research completed entirely as a doctoral student.
• first and presenting author of a contributed oral or poster presentation. Presentations may include additional co-authors. Students giving 15-minute talks in symposia will be eligible, but students giving 30 minute symposium presentations will not.
• planning to present a completed research project. Students engaged in continuing studies are welcome to attend NAOC-V and submit abstracts for the Scientific Program, but the presentation awards committee encourages students to apply only if they have a complete research story to offer at the conference.
• an active member at the time of the presentation at NAOC-V of at least one of the ornithological societies participating in the conference.
Procedures
• An application for presentation award consideration, including an expanded abstract of the work to be presented, will be required in advance of the deadline for submission of abstracts for the Scientific Program. Deadline: 29 February 2012
To apply for the Presentation Awards program, students must visit the application page on the Ornithology Exchange. Immediately after registering on the Ornithology Exchange, students may complete their application online.
• The awards committee intends to select a subset of presentations ('finalists') for full evaluation and consideration for awards in Vancouver. These decisions will be based on evidence of eligibility in the advance applications, and on completeness and quality of the research to be presented, as detailed in the expanded abstract. The committee intends to inform each applicant about whether his or her presentation will be evaluated prior to the conference.
