Ten awards of US $500 each are available to students to help defray the cost of traveling to the 2018 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists meeting in Rochester, New York (July 11th-15th). An applicant for a travel award must be a student and a current member of SSAR, must not have previously received a travel award from SSAR, and must be the first author of a paper or poster to be presented at the 2018 meeting. The application package must include: 1) a letter signed by his/her major advisor or department chair that states that he/she is not completely funded for travel from another source and, if the research is co-authored, that the work was primarily the product of the applicant; 2) a copy of the abstract that was submitted for either poster or oral presentation.
The qualified applicants will be pooled and the winners will be drawn at random. Winning applicants must volunteer 3-5 hours during the 2018 meeting to work at the bidding table for the Silent Auction and the viewing room for the Live Auction. Students from the immediate vicinity of the JMIH, as well as current members of the SSAR Travel Awards Committee, are excluded from applying for a travel award. However, members of the student travel committee are provided funds to help defray the costs of travel to the meeting to organize and maintain the silent auction as well as coordinate volunteers. If you are a student and interested in joining the committee and serving SSAR, please contact one of the current committee members. Award checks will be disbursed at the SSAR Business Meeting. Application materials are preferred in electronic form (either PDF or Microsoft Word) and should be sent to Ariana Rupp at aer0838@louisiana.edu by 4 May 2018; however, if an electronic submission is not possible please contact Ariana Rupp to arrange the delivery of a hard copy. Hard copies sent via postal mail must be postmarked prior to 4 May 2018 to be considered; however the drawing will take place on May 7th to ensure students have an opportunity to registrar before the early bird deadline. Therefore, if you must send in your application via postal mail it is recommended you send it earlier.
For more information, contact: Ariana Rupp (aer0838@louisiana.edu) or Dan Paluh (dpaluh@ufl.edu)
2015 Award Winners (6 of the 12 total winners shown)