Since 1998, the RCSG has sponsored a student paper competition at the SRA Annual Meeting. The generous assistance of the ExxonMobil Corporation has enabled the RCSG to provide a $500 prize to the top student paper, blind reviewed by a panel of distinguished judges. Calls for submissions to the student paper competition are circulated when SRA sends out its call for papers for the Annual Meeting. Generally, interested students submit abstracts indicating their interest in participating in the RCSG student paper competition. At a later deadline, students must submit a completed paper for review.

2008 Student Paper Competition information now available in DOC and PDF formats. Abstracts for the Competition are due on 24 May 2008 and can be submitted via the SRA website.

2007 award recipient (1st place): Rachel Hirsch, University of Western Ontario. Paper titled, "The Look of the lawn: Pesticide policy preference and risk perception."

Rachel Hirsch (left) receives the Best Student Paper Award from R. Jeffrey Lewis (ExxonMobil)

2nd place (tie): Philip Hart, Cornell University. Paper titled, "Environmental values and the Social Amplification of Risk: An examination of the public response to an outbreak of chronic wasting disease in Upstate New York"

Philip Hart (left) and Rachel Hirsch (right) pose with their certificates

2nd place (tie): Justin Lessman, Kansas State University. Paper titled, "Framing risk: Differences in cross-national news coverage of North Korea nuclear tests."