Ten awards of US $500 each are available to students to help defray the cost of traveling to the annual Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists each year. 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 2019 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 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 conference locality, 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.
Awardees will have the option to: 1) receive full award as a check disbursed at the SSAR Business Meeting; 2) have SSAR pay the meeting registration fee and then provide the balance at the Business Meeting; 3) have SSAR provide the check ahead of time for students to pay for their flights (but then students must reimburse SSAR should they ultimately not show up at the meeting). Awardees agree to provide any receipts requested.
Application materials are preferred in electronic form (either PDF or Microsoft Word) and should be sent to Ariana Rupp at aer0838@louisiana.edu by the deadline; 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 the due date to be considered. The drawing will take place on prior to the early bird registration deadline each year. Therefore, if you must send in your application via postal mail it is recommended you send it earlier.
Application deadline for 2019: May 4, 2019
Drawing to be held: May 7, 2019
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)