Tips for Proposing a Workshop, Short Course or Special Session for #ESA2021

ESA Water Cooler Chat ~ January 5^th, 2021

We invite proposals for workshops, short courses, and special sessions for ESA’s 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-6, 2021. The theme of the meeting is Vital Connections in Ecology.

Get familiar with the submission forms here

Although session proposals related to the meeting’s theme are encouraged, any timely and coherent subject of broad interest to ecologists will be considered. Proposals will be reviewed using criteria described in the proposal calls.

Hosted by:

Sarah Emery, 2021 Program Chair
Kiona Ogle, 2020 Program Chair
Christi Nam, Director, Conventions and Meetings
Jennifer Riem, Meeting Program Associate

Summary of the Conversation

ESA staff walked through the steps of a proposal submission showing screenshots of a workshop form as an example. Meetings Committee members gave advice on what makes a good submission using the submission guidelines as a reference. The slides from this chat are linked near the end of this page.

In addition to the submission guidelines, general advice from the committee included:

Most mistakes can be avoided by taking the time to carefully read and follow the proposal guidelines before beginning the submission and proofreading carefully during submission.
The session title should be clear, concise, interesting, clearly related to the session description, and not too long. Titles that are vague or very long are typical problems the committee sees.
The session description should be clear and well-written. It should align with the session title.
The one sentence summary should be one sentence. It should clearly align with the session description and title.
Sometimes strong proposals are rejected because multiple proposals are received in the same year that focus the same topic, and for these session types capacity may limit how many proposals can be accepted.