SSAR’s George B. Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award is sponsored by Zoo Atlanta and honors our colleague George Rabb (1930-2017), former Director of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, IL, and highly respected advocate and spokesman for wildlife conservation.
Award Information and Guidelines
The SSAR George W. Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award provides recognition for the best undergraduate student posters presented at the annual meeting of the SSAR. To be eligible to compete for this award, a student must be an undergraduate, or have graduated in the previous spring semester. The student must be the first author on the poster and must present the poster during the student poster competition at the annual JMIH or SSAR meeting. There can be additional authors on the poster. The competing student must be a current member of SSAR.
The George Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award entries will be judged by the following criteria:
Quality of Research
Quality of the Visual Display of the Research
Professionalism and Confidence of the Presenter
Poster award grading rubric can be accessed here.
Students may win the award only one time. Please indicate the appropriate category for which you are applying on the abstract submission form. For tips on making a great poster see: Poster Recommendations.
Poster presentation strategies and resources for increasing accessibility and impact can be accessed here.
Contact Allyson Fenwick (afenwick@uco.edu) for further information.
Results of previous competitions
2024:
The honorable mentions are:
In Ecology and Behavior: Jaden Kinney (Loyola University New Orleans) “Does social environment impact multimodal signaling in bird-voiced tree frogs (Hyla avivoca)?”
In Conservation and Management: Celina Eberle (University of New Mexico) “Invasion genetics of introduced bullfrogs (Rana catesbeina) in New Mexico”
In Development and Morphology: Riley Stanton (Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates), “Do big mouths make bad biters? Gape limitations appear to constrain evolution in the jaws of snakes”
The award recipients are:
In Physiology: Madeline Russelburg (Benedictine University), “Validating the use of bacterial killing assays to investigate immune health of spotted turtles living in contaminated environments
In Evolution and Genetics: Jonathan Eubanks and Hayden Hanna (Louisiana State University Shreveport), “Phylogenetics and rang-wide phylogeography of Garthia – a phyllodactylid gecko genus endemic to Chile”
This year’s judges were: Avi Berger (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Emily Bierbaum (University of Tulsa), Lauren Chan (California Polytechnic State University), Dick Durtsche (Northern Kentucky University), Harrison Goldspiel (University of Maine), Aaron Griffing (Princeton University), Marina Gerson (California State University, Stanislaus), Chun Kamei (Field Museum of Natural History), Bonnie Kircher (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center), and Shelby Timm (Missouri Department of Conservation).
2023:
Trevor Rallo (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), “Intraspecific Priority Effects in Smallmouth Salamanders: Effects on Larval Body Size and Survival”
Honorable mention: Madelene Grullon (Moravian University), “Plastics in our ponds and aquatic habitats: How are microplastics impacting larval amphibians”
This year’s judges were: RJ Rao (unaffiliated, from India), Jessica Tingle (University of Akron), and Michelle Koo (University of California, Berkeley)
2022:
Scott Kornfeind (Moravian University), “Tadpole Developmental Rate, Survival, and Behavior when Exposed to Microplastics During Development”
This was the fourth year of this competition and the first in-person competition since 2019. Nine students competed. This year’s judges were Anthony Barley (University of California Davis) and Alistair Dobson (California Institute of Environmental Sciences, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution).
2021:
Yucheol Shin (Nanjing Forestry University), “Distribution modeling of Onychodactylus koreanus predicts drastic decrease of suitable habitats in response to climate change”
This year’s judges were:
Allyson Fenwick, Chair (University of Central Oklahoma) and Ethan Royal (University of Arkansas)
2019:
Michael Buontempo (Christopher Newport University), “Evidence for Ecogeographic Divergence Linked to Dorsal Coloration in the Eastern Hognose Snake”
Eight eligible presentations were given at the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists & and Herpetologists in Snowbird, UT, 24-28 July 2019. This year’s judges were Michelle Koo (University of California, Berkeley), Cari-Ann Hickerson (John Carroll University), and Jonathan Rose (U.S.G.S. Western Ecological Research Center). A single awardee received a check for US $250 and an SSAR book.