Individual Student Competitions

Since 1987 TAGA has recognized the research achievements of TAGA Student Members and Chapters by bestowing several awards for exceptional work in technical research.

Harvey Levenson Undergraduate Competition

Established in 1987 and renamed in 1991 in honor of 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 students.

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 students.

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 following years TAGA conference.
  • The award recipients will have their papers published in the Annual Technical Proceedings published after the conference.

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 Dusty Rhodes Competition, the author was a graduate (i.e., MS candidate) student while the research took place and/or the paper was written.
    • PhD Students are encouraged to submit abstracts for technical paper presentation and poster paper sessions for the conference. If you have questions contact [email protected].
  • The deadline for submission of manuscripts is February 24, 2025. The deadline is strict, which means that no paper will be accepted after the deadline.
  • Please send a PDF file (under 5 MB) of your manuscript to [email protected].
    • Title the e-mail with the competition being entered
    • 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)
    Ensure this is included

Judging Body

The TAGA Board serves as the judges for all student competitions.