NARSC Student Competitions

NARSC Graduate Student Paper Competition The North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) Graduate Student Paper Award contest is held annually in conjunction with the North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). This contest encourages the participation of young scholars by providing a forum for paper presentation and discussion by senior scholars in the field of regional science. Beginning in 2010, two separate competitions will be held for graduate student papers:

1) Graduate-Student-Author Paper Competition: Eligibility for the award is limited to current Masters and PhD students, and/or recent graduates who completed their degrees within twelve months preceding the submission date. Co-authored papers are acceptable; however, all authors listed on a paper must meet the eligibility criteria above.

2) Graduate-Student-Led Paper Competition: Eligibility for the award requires that the paper’s “primary author” be a current Masters or PhD student, or a recent graduate who completed his/her degree within twelve months preceding the submission date. Papers with senior co-authors are acceptable; however, most of the substantive work and contribution of the paper must be directly attributable to an author who meets the eligibility criteria above.

The 2010 contest will be held in conjunction with the annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, to be held in Denver, Colorado. Individuals should submit a digital copy of their paper, along with a cover letter from their supervisor. For the Graduate-Student-Led Paper Competition, the cover letter should state the approximate percentages of the substantive work (ideas, methods, and applications) and contribution that are directly attributable to the primary author (a student or recent graduate).

Papers should be formatted consistent with Papers in Regional Science guidelines. The deadline for submission of the complete paper is August 1, 2010, with papers reviewed by a panel of judges prior to the NARSC annual conference. The winners will be announced during the awards luncheon on November 12, 2010. All authors who are selected as finalists will receive a cash prize. In-kind prizes may also be awarded. The prize-winning papers will also be considered for publication in Papers in Regional Science. Because the papers will be subject to standard review procedures, publication is not guaranteed.

Dr. Cushing with 2009 finalists Huang, Naveen, and Weinhardt

Those who wish to submit a paper to the NARSC Graduate Student Paper Award contest can indicate this when submitting the abstract (by August 1, 2010) by ticking the relevant box on the abstract submission page. The full paper must be submitted in electronic form by the same date, to

Neil Reid
University of Toledo
neil.reid@utoledo.edu

If you have any further questions about the NARSC Graduate Student Paper Award contest, please contact neil.reid@utoledo.edu.

Since the competition’s inception in 2006, first prize in the NARSC Graduate Student Paper Competition has been awarded to the following students:

2006 Thomas Light (Cornell University) and Steven Poelhekke (European University Institute)
2007 Amaya Vega (University College Dublin)
2008 Stephen Billings (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
2009 Felix Weinhardt (London School of Economics)

The Benjamin H. Stevens Graduate Fellowship in Regional Science The Fellowship is awarded in memory of Dr. Benjamin H. Stevens, an intellectual leader whose selfless devotion to graduate students as teacher, advisor, mentor, and friend continues to have a profound impact on the field of Regional Science. Fundraising efforts to increase the Fellowship’s endowment are ongoing. Donations should be sent to: The Stevens Fellowship Fund, Busey Wealth Management, P.O. Box 260, Champaign, IL 61824-0260 USA. Checks should be drawn to The Stevens Fellowship Fund.  Donations may also be made online at http://www.narsc.org/newsite/?page_id=59. The Stevens Fellowship is administered by a committee on behalf of the North American Regional Science Council; David Boyce serves as Secretary and Michael Lahr as Treasurer.

The 2010-11 Stevens Fellowship competition was judged by a selection committee consisting of: Edward Coulson, Economics, Penn State University, chair; Brigitte Waldorf, Agricultural Economics, Purdue University; Cynthia Rogers, Economics, University of Oklahoma; Lawrence Brown, Geography, Ohio State University, and Antonio Páez, Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University. The Committee thanks all students who entered the competition this year, as well as their doctoral supervisors. Faculty at all North American Ph.D. programs are asked to encourage their best students to apply for the Twelfth Annual Stevens Graduate Fellowship, which will support the winning student’s thesis research in the field of Regional Science with a fellowship of $30,000 for the 2011-2012 year. The application deadline is February 15, 2011. Full submission guidelines may be found at http://www.narsc.org/newsite/?page_id=444.

Adam Storeygard, a Ph.D. student in economics at Brown University, was selected as the winner of the Eleventh Annual Benjamin H. Stevens Graduate Fellowship in Regional Science. The Fellowship provides one-year stipend of $29,000 to support Storeygard in his research entitled, Essays on urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Storeygard’s work uses satellite data on lights at night to construct annual measures of economic activity in a large sample of African cities for which little other standardized information is available, in order to gauge the importance of factors including weather and roads on urban growth. The study will provide evidence about the effect of climate change on city growth, and the role of connective infrastructure on the evolution of urban systems, particularly with regard to core versus periphery development. His research is supervised by Professor J. Vernon Henderson, Department of Economics, Brown University.

Since 2000, the Benjamin H. Stevens Graduate Fellowship in Regional Science was also awarded to the following students:

2000 Michael J. Greenwald (University of California, Irvine; Marlon Boarnet, advisor)
2001 Rachel Franklin (University of Arizona; Brigitte Waldorf, advisor)
2002 JungWon Son (University of California-Los Angeles; Leobardo Estrada, advisor)
2003 Alison Davis Reum (North Carolina State University; V. Kerry Smith, advisor)
2004 Nicholas Nagle (Univ. of California-Santa Barbara; Stuart H. Sweeney, advisor)
2005 Xiaokun Wang (University of Texas at Austin; Kara Kockelman, advisor)
2006 Joshua Drucker (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Harvey Goldstein and Edward Feser, advisors)
2007 Alvin Murphy (Duke University; Patrick Bayer, advisor)
2008 Paavo Monkkonen (University of California, Berkeley; David E. Dowall, advisor)
2009 Elizabeth Mack (Indiana University; Tony H. Grubesic, advisor)