Student Awards

CALL FOR COMPETITORS

The Herpetologists’ League is pleased to announce the 2023 competition for The Herpetologists’ League Graduate Research Award (HLGRA). If you are a M.S. or Ph.D. student who has a completed/nearly completed thesis or dissertation (vs. preliminary results or a side project), then the HLGRA selection committee invites you to consider competing for this prestigious award. To participate, you must:

• (1) be a member of The Herpetologists’ League,
• (2) be a current graduate student or have completed your graduate degree within 14 months of your presentation,
• (3) submit an abstract (as the first author and having done the majority of the work) for the 2023 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (JMIH) indicating your desire to compete for the Herpetologists’ League Graduate Research Award,
• (4) submit a brief press release geared to a general audience that highlights the broader relevance of your work to the committee (detailed below), and
• (5) give the oral presentation at the meeting. Your presentation should be well-organized, set within a broader conceptual framework, and well-rehearsed (i.e., honed by practice and critical feedback from your advisor and others).

The student with the top-ranked presentation will receive $750, two years of membership in the Herpetologists’ League, and an invitation to submit a manuscript based on the work resented to Herpetologica or Herpetological Monographs. The Herpetologists’ League will commit to publishing this manuscript (following a successful peer-review process) as the lead paper in an issue and will identify the first author as the winner of the Herpetologists’ League Graduate Research Award. The committee may also be able to award $250 to the second-ranked presentation. All competitors will receive evaluations and constructive feedback from the judges after the meeting.

Press Release: Potential competitors must submit a brief press release that their department or university might write about their study to promote it for the general public. Thus, your press release should convey the significance and relevance of your work in layperson terms. If selected, your submission may be shared on social media by HL to promote your presentation in advance of the 2023 meeting. Your press release should be written in 12-point font and should not exceed one-half of a single-spaced page (2.5 cm margins). You are more than welcome to reformat statements and/or content directly from your JMIH abstract for use in your press release (no need to reinvent the wheel here!). Submit your completed press release as a PDF (please title the document: ‘Last name HLGRA.pdf”) via email to the chair of the HLGRA committee (contact information below) by the competition entry deadline (tentative deadline: one week after abstracts are due, by end-of-day EST). A maximum of 10 submissions that meet all competition requirements and are considered among the most competitive (based on review of their press release and submitted abstract) will be selected for inclusion in the 2023 competition. Those selected for the competition will be notified via email.

For further information or questions concerning The Herpetologists’ League Graduate Research Award, please contact the following:

Dr. Matthew Lattanzio
Department of Organismal and Environmental Biology
Christopher Newport University
1 Avenue of the Arts
Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 594-7044
email: matthew.lattanzio@cnu.edu