Applied Ecology Section Support for Student Travel to the ESA Annual Meeting

Following is the policy of the Applied Ecology Section on supporting student travel to the ESA Annual Meeting.
Here is how it will be implemented for the 2008 Annual ESA meeting.

1. Send applications including all supporting material by e-mail or paper copy to:

Shibu Jose, Ph.D.
Chair, Applied Ecology Section of ESA
School of Forest Resources and Conservation
351 Newins-Ziegler Hall
PO Box 110410
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-0410
e-mail sjose@ufl.edu

2. The deadline for receipt of applications is May 31, 2008.

3. We will notify successful applicants of their award by early July 2008.

4. Eligibility requirements and application requirements are as specified in this policy. Applications which do not comply with these specifications will not be considered.

Policy on Support for Student Travel to ESA meetings:

The Applied Ecology Section seeks to support the students in the presentation of their work at the ESA Annual Meeting.

Amount of support: The number and amount of awards will be determined by the section officers and will reflect the quality of applications received.

Application Process: Application will be submitted to the Chair of the Applied Section and evaluated by Section officers or a panel of judges that may be appointed by the Section Chair. Criteria for evaluation will include the quality of the work and its relevance to applied ecology. Special attention will be given to papers which link basic and applied ecology. Applications shall consist of a copy of the abstract accepted by the ESA for presentation at the annual meeting, with a brief cover letter from the student describing the application of the work to be presented. A recommendation from the student's advisor shall also be provided. This recommendation can be supplemented by other letters of reference from other faculty members in the student’s home institution, or by members of the student's dissertation or thesis committee. Applications are due by May 31 (or two and one half months after the deadline for submitting abstracts if ESA changes the deadline for abstract submittal from the end of January) and recipients will be notified by June 30 (or three and one-half months after the deadline for submitting abstracts if ESA changes the deadline for abstract submittal from the end of January).

Eligibility: Applicants must be the presenting author of a paper or poster which has been accepted for presentation at the annual meeting. Applicants must be enrolled as graduate or undergraduate students at the time of their application. Students, co-authors, employees, and relatives of current section officers (or judges of applications) are ineligible for this award.

Recipients

Past recipients of the Applied Ecology Section Student Travel Award have included:

2007, San Jose, California – Three students received $300 Student Travel Awards to attend the 92nd ESA Annual Meeting in San Jose, CA: Catherine Ravenscroft from the University of Wisconsin, Madison presented her research in a paper entitled “Planning and simulating forest landscape restoration in a mixed ownership landscape under climate change”; Ilyas Siddique from the School of Integrative Biology, The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia presented a paper entitled “Early-successional dynamics of tree species growth in response to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization in abandoned pasture in Eastern Amazonia”; Brian Allan from Washington University in Saint Louis presented his research on the “Effects of Fire Management on the Abundance of Amblyomma americanum (Acari: Ixodidae) in the Missouri Ozarks.” 

2006, Memphis, Tennessee – Sean T. Michaletz, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, received a $750 Student Travel Award to attend the 91st ESA Annual Meeting. He presented a paper entitled A heat transfer model of crown scorch in forest fires.

2005, Montreal, Canada – Four students received Student Travel Awards to attend the 90th ESA Annual Meeting in Montreal: Susan Tilley ($450), at Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NF, Canada; presented research on Agricultural Insect Pests: A threat to the conservation of rare plants?; Elise Buisson ($450), University of Avignon, France; presented research on Re-introducing native bunchgrasses to degraded California coastal prairies: Roles of grazing, topsoil removal and plant neighbor removals; Serge Eric Attignon ($350), University of Abomey-Calavy, Cotonou Littoral, Benin (Africa), presented research on the Activity of termites and other epigeal invertebrates in natural semi-deciduous forest and plantation forests in Benin; and Barbara Pamela Graff ($350), University of Buenos Aries, Argentina, presented research on Facilitation, competition and net effects in grass-to-grass interactions: the effect of grazing in Patagonian semiarid steppes.

2004, Portland, Oregon. Justin Touchon, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology at Boston University, received a $750 Student Travel Award to attend the 89^th ESA Annual Meeting. He presented his research on the interactions of biotic and abiotic risks affecting eggs and larvae of the Neotropical tree frog Hyla ebraccata in a symposium on "Ecological Implications of Phenotypic Plasticity".

2003, Savannah, Georgia. Carrie Reinhardt, a PhD student in Water Resources Science at the University of Minnesota, received a $500 Student Travel Award to attend the 88^th ESA Annual Meeting. She presented the paper "Patterns in rhizome carbohydrate fluctuation in the invasive Phalaris arundinacea: implications for wetland restorations.

2002, Tucson, Arizona. Three students received a $250 travel award to defray expenses: Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia; Betsy M. Galbraith, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point; and Joanne Tippet, School of Planning and Landscape, Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom