Deadlines

31 January 2024 Submissions for the Harvey Levenson Undergraduate Student Paper Competition and the Dusty Rhodes Graduate Student Paper Competition are due on this date. Papers should be formatted in PDF and <10 MB. Any files over 10MB must be sent via cloud service. All submissions should be sent to taga@printing.org. Papers have to be limited to a maximum of 20 pages including references and appendices. If the paper intended for submission to the competition just exceeds the 20-page limit please contact the VP of Education.

Harvey Levenson Undergraduate Competition

Established in 1987 and renamed in 1991 in honor or Dr. Harvey Levenson who founded the TAGA Student Chapter program (in 1985), the Harvey Levenson Undergraduate Student Paper Award is presented to the undergraduate student author of the best student research paper. Winners of this award are given the opportunity to present their paper at the following year’s Annual Technical Conference.

The purpose of the Harvey Levenson/TAGA Undergraduate Student Paper competition is to encourage and promote scientific research and scholarship in graphic arts to all active undergraduate student members of TAGA.

Dusty Rhodes Graduate Competition

To recognize the quality of the research papers authored by graduate level students, in 1995 the Dusty Rhodes Graduate Student Paper Award was established. Named after Dusty Rhodes, a long-standing TAGA member and pioneer in color reproduction technology and dedicated advocate of graphic arts research. Winners of this award are given the opportunity to present their paper at the following year’s Annual Technical Conference.

The purpose of the TAGA Graduate Student Paper competition is to encourage and promote scientific research and scholarship in graphic arts to all active graduate student members of TAGA.

Guidelines

  • Papers submitted should be focused on graphic arts technical research that took place during the current or previous academic year. Previously published papers will not be accepted.
  • For the Levenson Competition, the author was an undergraduate (i.e., BS candidate) student while the research took place and/or the paper was written.
  • For the Rhodes Competition, the author was a graduate (i.e., MS candidate) student while the research took place and/or the paper was written.
    (NOTE: PhD Students are encouraged to submit abstracts for technical paper presentation and poster paper sessions for the Annual Technical Conference by contacting the VP of Technical Papers at tagapapers@printing.org.
  • TAGA membership is not necessary to participate.
  • The number of papers in each competition is limited to 2 per university, so it is advisable that each chapter review possible submissions for the best candidates.
  • The deadline for submission of manuscripts is no less than 4 weeks prior to the Annual Technical Conference. The deadline is strict, which means that no paper will be accepted after the deadline.
  • Please send a PDF file (<5 MB) of your manuscript to taga@printing.org. Title the e-mail “mail “Harvey Levenson/TAGA Undergraduate Student Paper.” Please attach only one manuscript to each e-mail.
    • Also include the author’s complete contact information.

Judging Criteria

  • Relevance of work to graphic arts field (30 points)
    Try to answer this question: Should this work have been done? Are the results important? Also, take into account originality of work, and how much attention this topic has already received.
  • Technical content (25 points)
    Was there a hypothesis presented? Did the data test the hypothesis? Did this paper require research or just a quick literature review? Was previous work acknowledged and referenced? If there was no research for this paper, graders are suggested to award a maximum of 20 points for this category.
  • Clarity of Paper (15 points)
    Is this paper well written and clear or was it difficult to understand? Was the paper written with an appropriate structure for a technical paper?
  • Charts, Graphs, Illustrations (10 points)
    Were graphics included? Were these graphics created for this paper, or were they merely copied from another source? (And if they were, was the source acknowledged?)
  • Discussion (10 points)
    How well was the content presented? How well does the discussion of results apply to the hypothesis?
  • Quality of bibliography and references (10 points)

Award & Recognition

  • An award certificate will be presented to the award recipients or to a representative at the TAGA Conference.
  • The award recipients will be given the opportunity to present their papers at the TAGA Student Brunch.
  • The award recipients will have their papers published in the Annual Technical Proceedings published after the conference.

Judging Body

The TAGA Advisory Committee serves as the judges for all student competitions.

If there are any questions, please contact taga@printing.org or 412-259-1706.