Dear Arctic Info Subscribers,
I am writing to let you know that the ARCUS Award for Arctic Research
Excellence competition will be on hiatus this year. The ARCUS Award for
Arctic Research Excellence is a student paper competition judged in four
broad categories: Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and
Interdisciplinary Research, with up to four awards given each year. The
competition, sponsored and operated by ARCUS on behalf of its member
institutions, began in 1996, with the first winners recognized at the
1997 Arctic Forum and ARCUS annual meeting in Washington DC. For further
information, see http://www.arcus.org/award/index.html
In recent years the submissions to the competition have increased
dramatically and the program has outgrown ARCUS' ability to operate it
solely with ARCUS member dues. The ARCUS Board of Directors decided to
suspend the 2004-2005 competition in order to further develop the
program and to seek additional grant funding and sponsorship to sustain
the ARCUS Award for Arctic Research Excellence on a long term basis.
In an effort to continue to support and highlight the work of young
arctic researchers during this hiatus, ARCUS partnered this year with
the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) Open Science Meeting
(OSM) sponsoring agencies and the meeting organizers to hold a student
poster competition at the 27-30 October 2003 conference in Seattle,
Washington.
The SEARCH OSM was an international, interdisciplinary, and multi-agency
endeavor with a very broad representation of students, countries,
disciplines, and research. Student participation in the SEARCH OSM was
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of
Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, the Alaska
Native Science Commission, and ARCUS.
The student posters submitted to the meeting were judged by the meeting
organizing committee, which was a representative multi-agency and
multi-disciplinary group. ARCUS partnered with the Arctic Institute of
North America (AINA) to offer awards to the competition winners. The
winners will receive support to attend a relevant conference on the
Arctic and their work will be highlighted at the 2004 Arctic Forum in
Washington DC. They also will receive a two-year Arctic Institute of
North America membership, which includes a subscription to the
interdisciplinary journal ARCTIC. Information about the student posters
presented at the SEARCH meeting is available at
http://www.arcus.org/SEARCH/OSM/student_posters.html
We would like to thank all of the ARCUS Award for Arctic Research
Excellence competition participants over the past seven years for their
submissions, which reflect the excellence of researchers working in the
Arctic and the diversity of their research. We also want to thank the
many arctic researchers who have served as competition judges; your
contribution to the development of these young investigators has been
significant and we would like to acknowledge the many hours of service
and the dedication and commitment that have been the hallmark of the
judges over the years.
We encourage you to spread the word about the year-long hiatus of the
ARCUS Award for Arctic Research Excellence competition. We expect to
return with an even better program in the fall of 2004. More information
about the SEARCH OSM and about the ARCUS Award for Arctic Research
Excellence can be found by visiting the ARCUS web site at:
http://www.arcus.org
Wendy K. Warnick
Executive Director, ARCUS