Pollitzer Student Travel Awards 2015

Deadline: December 1, 2014 (new!)

The Pollitzer Student Travel Awards are designed to help students defray the costs of attending the AAPA meetings. They are named in honor of William S. Pollitzer, a Human Biologist who taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was a Darwin Lifetime Achievement Awardee, and past president of the AAPA.

Qualifications: This award is open to all AAPA members in good standing (undergraduate and graduate) who are students and attending the annual meeting. You do NOT have to present a paper or poster to compete or receive an award. In order to be eligible for a travel award, you MUST be a student member of AAPA at the time that you apply AND at the time the meeting is held (to check your membership status, contact aapamember@allenpress.com). You may not receive more than one student travel award in your career.

Award: Each award of $500 is made to defray travel costs to the meetings.

Essay Prompt: Biological anthropologists, like most other anthropologists, are intimately interested in diversity — genetic, phenotypic, behavioral, and cultural — yet the discipline, like many other academic fields, is still marked by less diversity among its ranks than we appreciate in the population at large. At the same time, national and international news reports are filled with incidents of discrimination and violence that is deeply seated in racial, political, religious, and ethnic intolerance or in long-standing gender inequities. In a short essay (750 words maximum), discuss why and how the subject of diversity might be brought to the fore in our discipline and how biological anthropologists might contribute productively to the larger conversation about the importance of diversity.

Application: Your essay should be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word file. Please use the following convention for naming your submission: LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME.doc (or docx). Also, because your submission will be evaluated anonymously, please be sure NOT to include your name, institutional affiliation, or other identifying information in the text of your submission.

Any submission over 750 words will be automatically disqualified.

Send essays to Anthony Di Fiore (anthony.difiore@austin.utexas.edu) by December 1. Please send a second email to the same address alerting Dr. Di Fiore to the fact that the essay was sent. Within 24 hours, students should expect to receive an e-mail acknowledging receipt of their essay.

Essay Evaluation and Scoring Procedures: The AAPA Student Affairs Committee will evaluate each submission with an identification number to mask applicants’ identities. When distributed to the judges, each essay will be identified by a number assigned by the committee chair. The scoring criteria are:

  1. Clarity and focus. 45 points possible
  2. Originality of thought and insight. 45 points possible
  3. Grammar and spelling. 10 points possible

The average scores from all judges will be used as the basis for deciding the winners of the award, with the AAPA Executive Committee giving final approval of the committee’s recommendation. Winners will be notified by mid- January 2015 and payment from the AAPA Secretary-Treasurer will be made via check or paypal once meeting registration and travel are confirmed.