Chambliss Student Poster Awards for AAS 225

The latest Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards poster competition, which occurred last week during the 225th AAS meeting in Seattle, Washington, was quite exhilarating. Nearly 300 students entered the competition, of which about 55% were undergraduates, and there were approximately 250 judges! Student posters were evaluated during the morning coffee breaks and afternoon poster sessions Monday through Wednesday of the meeting. With the increase in undergraduate and graduate students presenting work on their education-related activities, such as astronomy-education research and curriculum projects, we've modified the judging rubric to make it appropriate for these types of poster presentations, in addition to astronomy research projects, to be included in the competition.

I had the opportunity to interact with many of the students before and after their posters were judged. Students generally expressed excitement about being in the completion, but also expressed how nice their judges were. The many judges I spoke with also expressed how much they looked forward to meeting the Chambliss students and talking with them about their work. They also expressed that being a Chambliss judge was a very rewarding and gratifying experience. So, if you haven't signed up to judge student posters in the past, I encourage you to do so in the future. The next opportunity will be at the 227th AAS meeting in January 2016.

Here are the results from Seattle:

Graduate Student Medal Winners

• Jonathan Florez (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Brandon Harrison (Boston Univ.)
• Mason Lamb (Univ. of Victoria)
• Clair Murray (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison)
• Maxime Rizzo (Univ. of Maryland)

Graduate Student Honorable Mentions

• Tansu Daylan (Harvard Univ.)
• Brett Morris (Univ. of Washington)
• Valerie Rapson (Rochester Institute of Technology)
• Meredith Rawls (New Mexico State Univ.)
• Benjamin Tofflemire (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison)

Undergraduate Medal Winners

• Jaclyn Bradli (Rutgers Univ.)
• Stacy Hancock (Western Kentucky Univ.)
• Kristen Luchsinger (St. John's College)
• Allison McGraw (Univ. of Arizona)
• Joseph Putko (Middlebury College)

Undergraduate Honorable Mentions

• Alex Deich (Reed College)
• Wilfred Gee (Univ. of Hawaii, Hilo)
• Jonathan Jackson (Harvard Univ.)
• Emily Johnson (Univ. of Washington)
• Rostom Mbarek (Grinnell College)
• James Murray (Univ. of Texas, Brownsville)
• Adam Pierce (Brigham Young Univ.)

Congratulations, all! On behalf of our Society and all of the students who entered the AAS 225 Chambliss competition, I would like to thank our volunteer judges, with a special thanks to those who volunteered onsite to replace judges who had last-minute schedule changes. I would also like to thank the AAS Executive Office staff who help to make this very important competition such a big success.