1. To submit papers to the competition, students must have completed the paper as student in an undergraduate program in the state of Nebraska.

2. Papers submitted to the competition must be read at the annual fall meetings. In cases of unusual circumstance, (e.g. the student is in graduate school in another state, illness) the student can be video taped and the tape presented at the symposium or the faculty advisor can present.

3. Papers or works in progress can be presented at the conference that are not submitted to the paper competition. These papers/abstracts/titles should be sent to the person coordinating this year’s conference.

4. Each year, three faculty volunteer to be judges for the paper competition. Each judge reads each paper and assigns a rank to the paper. The guidelines used to evaluate papers are attached. The coordinator for the paper competition (who could be one of the judges), averages out the rankings to decide upon the winners.

5. Papers for the competition are read blind. The reader does not know the name of the
student or the student's undergraduate institution. Students should remove, as much as
possible, identifying information from the paper (e.g. name of school where the data were gathered).

6. Students submit three (3) copies of their paper to the paper competition coordinator. All identifying information should appear on the cover page (Name, title of paper, school, category to which the paper is being submitted). Students should place the title of the paper on the first page of the paper.

7. Papers are to be submitted to one of two categories:
          (1) literature review or theory
          (2) empirical (quantitative, qualitative, or case study)

8. Awards will be given for first and second place in each category. In the case of ties, two first and no second could be given or one first and two seconds could be awarded.

9. Papers should follow generally accepted standards of professionalism including citing (ASA, APA or any professional citation style is acceptable).

For more information, you may e-mail Diane Kholos Wysocki, Ph.D at wysockid@unk.edu