Review and Selection Criteria

NAFSA's 2009 Annual Conference is being planned to offer a well-rounded conference program of interest to a wide variety of participants. The members of the Annual Conference Committee have done a significant amount of preplanning to ensure diversity in both content and target audiences.

In order to be considered, proposals must be submitted as instructed prior to the published deadlines. The proposal process is highly competitive and only half the proposals submitted each year are accepted. To help submitters develop competitive proposals, the Annual Conference Committee recommends reading and following the Submission Requirements, Submission Instructions, and Guidelines for Proposal Writers.

Review

Each proposal submitted for the annual conference is carefully reviewed for its overall quality, contribution to the field of international education, and for how well it fits each required proposal element chosen by the submitter. Reviewers include NAFSA members from each knowledge community, selected individuals with subject matter expertise, and members of the 2009 Annual Conference Committee.

A number of factors outlined in this Call for Proposals will help to determine which proposals are accepted. Consideration will be given to:

• Relevance to the selected target audience, including an appropriate level of participant knowledge and appropriate institutional type;
• How closely the topic fits the parameters of the selected content focus area;
• How well-suited the chosen session design is to effectively convey the content in the format and time allotted;
• Clear and achievable learning objectives;
• Session design that includes delivery methods to ensure audience engagement in learning;
• Relevant presenter expertise; and
  
• Overall diversity of topics to be presented at the conference.

Notifications

General conference session and workshop proposals submitted for the August 1st deadline will be reviewed in the fall, and notification will be sent to submitters in mid-November. Posters submitted by the November 14th deadline will be reviewed and notifications will be sent at the end of January. Notifications and subsequent presenter instructions are sent only to the person who submitted the original proposal. This individual is responsible for communicating information to other session presenters and for immediately updating his/her NAFSA profile if there are any changes in his/her contact information.