Guidelines for the Graduate Student Honors Poster Competition

The student honors competition consists of paper competitions for both Master and Doctoral levels and one combined poster competition for Master and Doctoral levels.

The master’s level will be combined with the Doctoral level if minimal students submit abstracts for the presentation portion of the competition. Master’s level competition will still be judged separately from the Doctoral.

Eligibility

To be eligible to participate in the student honors competition, you must be a graduate student enrolled in a geography or related discipline (such as but not limited to, geology, geosciences, earth and environmental science, sustainability, anthropology, history, and sociology) and in residence at the sponsoring department at the time your research was done. The sponsoring department must be located within the SEDAAG region. Ph.D. students must still be enrolled as a student at the time the paper is presented. Masters-level students who have graduated since doing their research may present their papers at the first SEDAAG meeting following graduation. Papers should represent original research. Maps, illustrations, and other audiovisual materials should be designed and constructed by the author.

No multiple-authored papers will be accepted. Advisors and other students involved in the research can be mentioned in the poster acknowledgments or in the paper presentation acknowledgments, however, only one student can author and present each poster/paper. All topics broadly related to geography may be entered and will be given a critical and impartial evaluation.

Departmental Responsibilities

Each department is required to verify the eligibility of graduate students for the honors competition and conduct preliminary screening of papers to ensure that those submitted are high quality products. Each department should ensure that authors accepted in the competition attend the 2024 meeting and are present at the awards ceremony.

Evaluation and Selection Procedures

Papers and posters submitted for the honors competition will undergo preliminary screening by the Honors Committee. Those accepted for the competition will be referred to the Program Committee for inclusion in an honors competition session. Papers and posters not included in the competition but accepted to the SEDAAG program will be placed in an appropriate session elsewhere. Students will be notified by the Honors Committee if they were accepted to the competition and if their work was accepted but will be placed elsewhere.

Poster Submissions and Presentation Criteria

Considerations for Honors Competition Poster Submissions:

The poster must be prepared with care and treated as one prepares a manuscript for possible publication, which includes proper citations. A primary criterion for evaluation will be a well-defined research objective and a methodology appropriate to achieving it. The paper/poster should focus on one or more research questions and present at least a tentative answer, or it will receive a lower score in the judging competition. The Honors Paper/Poster Competition is not an appropriate venue for research in the proposal stage or not yet completed.

Each poster submission will be evaluated on the following criteria:

Poster Criteria:

• Quality in the written and visual reporting of original research undertaken by the author.
• It’s a visual presentation.
• It’s an oral explanation when presented to judges.
• Proper citations.

Poster Presentation Criteria:

• The overall poster’s quality, appropriateness, and visual appeal, including maps, figures, and illustrations.
• Materials should be of professional quality and legible from a distance of three feet.
• The text should be confined to brief statements.
• The text should be well organized.
• Proper citations.
• Maximum poster dimensions are 36’ by 48″.

The Overall Score:

The weight for each category is as follows: 30 percent for the written component, 30 percent for the oral explanation and questions, and 40 percent for the visual presentation.

Submission Instructions for Graduate Honors’ Papers or Posters

Step 1

Join or renew your SEDAAG membership. https://sedaag.org/membership.

Step 2

You only need to submit the abstract through the SEDAAG submission portal and be sure to select “Graduate Poster Competition.”

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdCXKGzwGnOlYNIoUpqTyd4J-3_0Y4mQyi00ChdEBD0vihxUQ/viewform

The following distinguished Geography graduate students have been awarded the Best Poster Award since 2006.

Year	Recipient	Institution
2025
2024	Gabriel Small	University of North Carolina – Greensboro
2024	Honorable Mention – Basit Akinade	University of Alabama
2023	Jade Lee	Georgia Southern University
2020	Yvonne Marsan	Univ. of North Carolina – Wellington
2019	Jessica Miller	Univ. of North Carolina – Greensboro
2018	Tyler J. Mitchell	Univ. of North Carolina – Greensboro
2017	Randi Robison	Mississippi State Univ.
2015	Jessy Van Horn	East Carolina Univ.
2014	Jessy Van Horn	East Carolina Univ.
2013	Jonathan Welker	Appalachian State Univ.
2012	Kunwar K. Singh	Univ. of North Carolina – Charlotte
2010	Maggie Kovach	Univ. of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
	Nicholas Campiz (M)	Univ. of Florida
2009	Monica Dorning (PhD)	Univ. of North Carolina – Charlotte
2008	Leanne Sulewski	Univ. of North Carolina – Greensboro
2007	Joshua Durkee	Univ. of Georgia
	Caleb Parker	East Carolina Univ.
2006	Ashley Littell	Western Kentucky Univ.