Call for Sessions

Session Chair Responsibilities

Once the sessions are established, session chairs are asked to solicit at least 6-8 abstracts to help form the session. Sessions are most successful when the chair or co-chairs recruit interested speakers well in advance of the abstract submission deadline in January.

All contributors must submit an abstract through the IAGLR website once the Call for Abstracts is available in November. Session chairs will monitor the abstracts being submitted to their session and work with the authors to edit or modify as needed. If fewer than 5 presentations are received for a given session, the conference program chairs will consult with the session chair either to combine the submitted abstracts with another session or create a new session title with similar abstracts submitted to other sessions. When all abstracts are assigned to a session, the session chairs will determine the order of presentation within their session. 

During the conference, it is the duty of the chairs to ensure that the session runs precisely on the time scheduled for each talk. This is necessary for both the presenters and the audience.

At the conference, session chairs are expected to:

• introduce the session
• introduce each presenter
• manage the time to ensure each presentation is on time (20-minute time slots must be adhered to)
• facilitate the question and answer periods within the final 5 minutes of the time slot

All speakers including session organizers must pay registration fees.

Questions?

If you have any questions about chairing a session, please contact the conference program chairs at [email protected]:

• Donna Kashian, Wayne State University, (313) 577-8052
• Catherine Riseng, University of Michigan, (734) 763-9422
• Mary Bohling, Michigan Sea Grant, (313) 410-9431