Graduate Students Awards Competition
- Best Doctoral Research Award: 1st Place = $500 cash award and plaque
- Best Masters Research Award: 1st Place = $250 cash award and plaque
General Admission Requirements :
These research awards are competitively awarded each calendar year to Ph.D. and M.S.
students graduating within the same calendar year. These awards are intended to
recognize the scholarly excellence and achievement by the cadre of graduate students in
Civil and Environmental Engineering. Graduate students will be judged based on (1)
an Oral Presentation before the awards committee (40%), (2) an assessment of
Scholarly Writings (40%), and (3) Awards and Accomplishments (20%).
Students must be nominated by their research advisors for this award and have a
minimum graduate GPA=3.5. Each advisor may nominate no more than 1 graduate
students for each of these awards (i.e., 1 MS and 1 PhD). Students must be nominated by
April 1 of the academic year based on the research advisor’s assurance that the student
will in fact graduate during the same calendar year.
- Oral Presentation: Nominated students shall prepare slides for a 15 minute
presentation describing the scholarly research performed while a student at the
University of Maryland. Students should also be prepared to field questions from
the awards committee for approximately five minutes following the presentation.
Copies of these slides should be provided to the awards committee. The oral presentation will be judged based on the following categories: (a) Technical Content, (b) Importance to the Field, (c) Style and Clarity, and (d) Completeness. - Scholarly Writings: Nominated students shall provide a sample of their scholarly writing describing research performed while a student at the University of Maryland.
- For the M.S. Research Award, the nominated M.S. student may provide two writing samples from among the following: conference or archival journal manuscripts (published or submitted) for which the nominated student is the primary author and for which the research forms the basis of the student’s M.S. research , the M.S. Scholarly Paper, or a précis of the student’s M.S. thesis or even the M.S. thesis itself.
- For the Ph.D. Research Award, the nominated Ph.D. student may provide
two writing samples from among the following: conference or archival
journal manuscripts (published or submitted) for which the nominated
student is the primary author and for which the research forms the basis of
the student’s doctoral research, or a sample of the student’s doctoral thesis
itself.
- The student should indicate which writing sample should be evaluated by
the committee as the primary evidence of scholarship.
- The writing sample will be judged based on the following categories: (a) Technical Content, (b) Importance to the Field, (c) Style and Clarity, and (d) Completeness.
- Awards and Accomplishments. Emphasis will be placed on awards and accomplishments that are the results of the student’s graduate research. The student may provide additional evidence of scholarly accomplishment as below:
a. List of Publications
b. List of Awards and Fellowships
c. Evidence of GPA (informal transcript).
CEE winners will be nominated for the college competition where they will be evaluated
by a college-wide committee along with other senior researchers in the local area. The
winners at the college level will win an additional cash award and plaque.
Prof. A. Torrents will serve as the chair of this committee within CEE. If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Torrents via email (alba@umd.edu).
