Cartography Specialty Group

The Cartography Specialty Group (CSG) of the Association of American Geographers is pleased to announce the 2009 Honors Student Paper Competition to be presented at the AAG Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada (March 22-27, 2009).  The purpose of this competition is to promote written scholarship and high quality presentation by students in the field of cartography and geovisualization. 

 We invite students to submit full papers to the competition and present those papers at a special session of the 2009 AAG.

Eligibility:

The competition is open to students at all academic levels.  A student must be currently enrolled in an accredited two or four year institution.  Applicants must also be a current member of the AAG Cartography Specialty Group (CSG).  Any paper authored and presented by a student is eligible for the competition, provided the paper has not already been published or presented somewhere.

Guidelines for Applications:

To be considered for participation in the CSG paper competition, an extended abstract of approximately 250 words that describes an ongoing or complete research investigation must be submitted electronically as an attachment (Microsoft Word) to jmennis@temple.edu.  An abstract submission must be in Microsoft Word format, with 12-point Times New Roman font, one inch margins with left justification (ragged right), and single-spaced lines.  Applicants must clearly indicate that they wish to be considered for the CSG Student Paper Competition.

Applicants must register for the 2009 AAG Annual Meeting before submitting an abstract to the CSG student paper competition.  Please submit an AAG participant number which is issued when successfully registering for the AAG meeting with your abstract.  For detailed instructions on how to acquire a participant number for the annual meeting, see the AAG web page (http://aag.org/annualmeetings/2009/registration.htm).

The abstract and participant code are due to the Jeremy Mennis (jmennis@temple.edu) by October 11, 2008.

Judging:

Abstracts and written papers will be judged by the CSG Awards Committee on several criteria: potential contribution to the field of cartography and geovisualization, originality, appropriate use of methodology, scholarship, organization, and written composition.  The oral presentation of papers will be judged on professional delivery, organization, clarity, and appropriate use of graphics.  Judging will take into account the academic level of the applicants.

Finalist:

Finalists will be notified of the acceptance of their abstract via e-mail no later than October 14, 2008.  Each finalist will be asked to submit a full paper of approximately 6,000 words to be considered for presentation at the 2008 AAG Annual Meeting.  The deadline for submission of full papers is February 1, 2009.

Paper Submission:

We especially encourage papers on theoretical, conceptual, and methodological developments in cartography and geovisualization rather than on particular mapping applications. Papers must be written entirely by the applicant. Students who are selected as finalists will be placed in a special session at the annual meeting. The only exception is a student who is also selected as a Nystrom Dissertation Award finalist, in which case, he or she may present in the Nystrom paper session instead.

Papers, including the related bibliography and associated tables and figures, must be submitted in the format used by the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (for details see http://www.cartogis.org/publications/document.2006-09-05.7116381016).  A cover page should include the student author's name, academic affiliation, faculty advisor for the paper, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address.  The second page should include only the title of the paper and the abstract.  The content of the paper should begin on the third page.

The final written paper should be submitted electronically via e-mail to Jeremy Mennis (jmennis@temple.edu) as a Microsoft Word document attachment (12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins with left justification, and double spaced).  The content of the paper, including text, references, figures and tables, is limited to about 20 pages in length and should not exceed 6,000 words.

Awards:

Up to five competition finalists will be selected by the CSG Awards Committee on the basis of the quality of their abstracts.  Each finalist will be awarded a full student registration to attend the 2008 AAG Annual Meeting in Boston.  The first place winner will receive a $100 cash prize 

The awards committee reserves the right not to offer such prizes if the papers are not a professional quality. The award will be decided on the basis of the written paper and the oral presentation.  The results of the competition will be published in the AAG Newsletter and on the specialty group's web page.

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