Wednesday, February 26, 2014

On-line judging needed ASAP for student paper competition

Friends, we got the following note from Jeff Laube, Director - Technical for the AIAA Western Region.  He has an urgent request from the organizer of the AIAA Region VI Student Paper Competition, Oleg Yakimenko.  We need people to review papers in advance of this weekend's competition.

The need is still very great.  The sign-up site in the instructions below.  Please drop Jeff a note if you decide to do so.

--Rick Kwan
  Technical Officer, AIAA San Francisco


Greetings Section Chairs and Technical Officers... 

I hope your 2014 is going well.  Some of you may have received this request from Oleg for the upcoming Region VI Student Conference.  Please consider (or pass along to folk interest in) becoming an on-line judge for the conference.  If you have questions, contact Oleg directly.  (And if you or someone from you section agrees to be a judge... drop me a note to let me know). 

Regards, 
Jeff 

(P.S.  Please let me know if there has been any changes to your section's technical officer) 


Jeff Laube 
Senior Project Engineer 
The Aerospace Corporation

Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 
Chair Emeritus, AIAA Space Operations & Support Technical Committee (2011-2012)
Deputy Director - Technical, Region VI




----- Forwarded by Jeffrey R Laube/West/Aerospace/US on 02/24/2014 06:39 AM ----- 

From:        "Yakimenko, Oleg (CIV)" <oayakime@nps.edu> 
To:         
Date:        02/22/2014 10:22 AM 
Subject:        AIAA Region VI Student Conference - on-line judges needed 


Dear Colleagues and Friends, 
 
If you are receiving this email it's because I know you are active in the AIAA, specifically the Region VI AIAA, OR you have acted as a technical judge for the AIAA Student Conference of Region VI in the past, reviewing student papers on-line.
 
This year, the 2014 AIAA Region VI Student Conference will be held a month earlier, on March 1st and 2nd (next weekend) in Sacramento, hosted by the student branch of the California State University, Sacramento (https://region6.aiaastudentconference.org/). The conference is an opportunity for university students to compete, for cash prizes, in a competition where both their paper and their presentation will be judged.  This event brings the best and the brightest university students from our region together to demonstrate their passion for science, technology, engineering, and math, (STEM) by presenting their work on aerospace related topics.  At the moment we have 15 papers uploaded on to the conference website already and expect to have a few more by COB today.
 
The key to a successful competition is getting all of the work (papers and presentations) judged fairly.  We need at least 3 judges to read each paper and score it, based on the rubric that is provided.  With the conference approaching quickly, I really count on your help.  It's easy to be a technical judge – it's all on-line so, you can read at your leisure.
 
Below, I have included the directions for getting on the site and registering a judge.  Once you've done that, you can read as many papers as you like – and, there's even a standard scoring rubric. Please help me out – you'll actually be helping AIAA, the students, and even yourself, as you read these great papers from our region’s best and brightest university students.   If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.  AND, if you know someone else, that might be interested in reading a few papers – please pass on the information.
 
Thanks in advance for your consideration,
 
Oleg Yakimenko
Deputy Director, Education, AIAA Region VI
 
 
To Become a Technical, On-Line Judge:   First, you create an account at: http://region6.aiaastudentconference.org .  It is relatively self-explanatory!
If you were a technical on-line judge in the past, just log in with your old credentials.
 
Once your account is set up, select the Judging Application link almost all way down on the left hand side of the web page.  If you can answer “yes”; to all of the questions, you qualify to be a judge!  Use the access code: sacramento to sign up.  Then, when your application flows through the process (it takes a few minutes) the left hand menu bar will have two new labels “Scoring Standards” and “Review Papers” – the scoring rubric is displayed when you click on “Scoring Standards” and when you click on “Review Papers” you will see the titles and subject matter of all the papers that have been written and submitted for this year's conference.
 
The technical papers are listed by the competition category which includes “Masters” (at the moment we have 2 papers expecting few more), “Team” (5 papers), “Undergraduate” (4 papers). The “Community Outreach” category (2 papers) does not need to be scored because it only requires short abstracts and the judgment will be based on presentations.  Please try to read all papers in one category (Undergrad, Masters, Team), so that a variation in the grades you provide affect the total scores within the same category evenly.
 
Your anonymous comments will be available to the on-site judges to assist in making a final decision, and also to students after the conference to help them improving the content and writing style of their future papers.
 
You need NOT be a subject matter expert to review the papers – the students should be able to present their research in a way that you, as an aerospace professional, can read and comprehend.  
 
Feel free to read as many as you like. . . .  
Once you get going it's even sort of fun!