NCERA-101 Student Poster Competition Rules, Expectations, and Judging Criteria
For the past several years, through the contributions of both our corporate sponsors and membership’s time, NCERA-101 has hosted a Student Poster Competition at the annual meeting. The goal is to
encourage developing scientists to participate in the annual meeting and reward well executed posters
and discussion with a modest cash award.
To enable poster judging and to help the each year’s meeting hosts for planning purposes, the following
rules will be enacted:
1. Each poster submission that will be included in the competition must be accompanied by an
abstract. The abstract must include:
a. Brief title
b. Authors name and affiliation. Note who the student is that will be presenting the work
and the student’s advisor.
c. Description of the work to be presented. The work should have a clear controlled
environment and/or environmental measuring and monitoring component(s). (See
Judging Criteria for more specifics)
2. The abstract must be submitted no later than 30 days prior to the annual meeting (This year,
March 12, 2014). For submission, send it directly to both the meeting host and to Jonathan
Frantz ([email protected]).
3. The poster should not exceed 1.2 m wide by 1.2 m tall (47 inches). This size may vary with venue
and display space. The content, similar to that of the abstract, should have a clear controlled
environment and/or environmental measuring and monitoring component(s).
4. It is expected that the poster will be displayed at the meeting and presented to the meeting
attendees by the student during scheduled breaks and/or judging sessions.
Judging
Judging will be done by three meeting attendees each year, selected based on their lack of affiliation
with any of the presenters (e.g. no major professors of the presenters will be judges that year).
Attempts will be made to include industry, university, and government members. Judges will not be
anonymous and will visit the posters as a group. Presenters should be prepared to give a brief
description of their project and answer any questions about the poster the judges may have. The
judging will last between 10 - 15 minutes per poster. When all posters have been presented, the judges
will meet and discuss. Winners will be selected (first, second, and third place, depending on the number
of participants) and announced at a later meeting function.
Criteria:
Poster appearance (20%): Is the layout attractive? Are there relevant and informative figures? Are the
data tables (if any) useful? Is the poster broken up into obvious or intuitive sections to help explain the
project? Are all figures, tables, and text boxes easy to read?
Technical Content (30%): How important is the topic? What problem does the work address or solve?
Are the techniques appropriate for the questions being asked? Is the environment measured and
reported according to NCERA-101 guidelines (http://www.controlledenvironments.org/guidelines.htm)?
Are the conclusions logically derived from the data presented?
Presentation (50%): How well does the presenter know the topic and background? Does the presenter
tell the poster’s story completely? How well does the presenter respond to questions from the judges?
Is a next step described?
2014-02 v1.0 NCERA-101