Student Participation

For many students, the NENHC serves as the first opportunity to give an oral or poster presentation at a scientific conference, often under the auspices of their major professor. The conference also provides exposure to leading-edge research in the full breadth of the natural history sciences in the Northeast, and the opportunity to forge collegial relationships and friendships and sow the seeds for collaborations with researchers and fellow students from throughout the region.

Students - A Valued Segment of the Natural History Science Community

Participation by students in NENHC is appreciated and supported. Their enthusiasm and fresh insight add greatly to the energy and content of the conference, and, as the upcoming generation of researchers, instructors, and resource managers, today's students will be playing a major role in the natural history sciences for years to come. To encourage student involvement, we are pursuing opportunities to assist with attendance and/or travel costs for students giving presentations. See below for volunteering options to help students to defray the cost of attending. We will post new opportunities here as they become available.

Student Poster Awards

This year we again hope to have judges evaluating the student poster presentations and awarding cash prizes of $300, $200, and $100 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each of two categories: Graduate Student presentations and Undergraduate/High School presesntations.

Student Conference Volunteers

Earn Back your Registration Fee!

Students giving presentations who would like to be a part of the conference team and who are willing to work 8 hours as Conference Volunteers will have their basic student registration fee refunded. Students must first register for the meeting and pay the registration fee. Then, once the 8 hours of assistance have been completed, the basic registration fee paid will be reimbursed in full before the end of the conference.

Conference Volunteers may be asked to take on a variety of duties as needed; however, the primary role for volunteers is staffing the session rooms: helping presenters load and test out their presentations and serving as session projectionists and to assist the session moderators to keep sessions flowing smoothly. It is not an onerous job, gives the volunteer the opportunity to have a little more interaction with some of the session moderators and presenters, and still allows one to attend sessions all day. However, experience and competence with using laptops and digital projectors to give powerpoint presentations is especially helpful. The presentation laptops are PCs running Windows operating systems, but familiarity with both PCs and Macs is a plus.

If you are interested in serving as a Conference Volunteer, check the appropriate box on the Conference registration form. If you decide after you had already registered that you would like to sign up as a volunteer, you can do so by sending an email to office@eaglehill.us. Requests for serving as conference volunteers must be received by March 18, 2024. Note that volunteers need to be available the full day they serve, from early in the morning (volunteer orientation will start at 6:40 am of the day you are scheduled for) through the last session of the day. When you register, you need to let us know if you are only available to volunteer on a particular day (i.e., Saturday or Sunday). Please note that we have only limited volunteer opportunities, which will be filled in the order of those who sign up on their registration form, with preference also being given to those who are available a day they are not presenting. Requests received beyond our needs will be placed on a waiting list in case slots open up. Thus, if you do sign up to volunteer but later realize you cannot serve that role, it is important that you promptly let us know.

We will be contacting potential volunteers about a month before the conference to confirm assignments.

Please contact us if you have any questions.