Scgis Scholarship Program

SCGIS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

This is a tentative and very general timeline of organizational activities assuming 2017 dates for the UC and SCGIS conference. Guideline documents referenced in the timeline are highlighted in blue

Early-mid October 9 months prior

Create the scholarship program plan, secure staff commitments and responsibility agreements

If impossible, have a rough idea that you can advertise so people know what they are applying for. You have until mid March to make more specific plans that you will announce, and commit to, in the award letters sent to the winners.

Early-mid November: 8 months prior

-Have the plan well enough defined to have assigned announcement responsibilities, created the announcement. Ideally, know exactly what you will be doing, so you can start working on the advance planning as the announcement is rolling out.

-Finalize application forms and review guidelines for chapters.

SCGIS Application Form 2016.doc is the current version of the application form

SCGIS Scholarship review guidelines 2017cc.doc is the current version of the review guidelines doc

-Send out the announcement to the chapters. They now have 4 months (until March 1) to organize the application process locally and to conduct the initial review of the applications. Timing is bad for chapters & applicants because of closeness to end-of-year vacations so you MUST get this rolling in early November so they can get the word out BEFORE the holidays.

-Continue Refining the scholarship application itself based on findings and corrections from the prior year, also refine the scholarship review process and update the scholarship review instructions and processes

-Begin tracking hotel reservations windows for San Diego so you can secure rooms as soon as the bookings open up

December-January: 7-6 months prior

-make a hotel reservation for San Diego. Or do it earlier, whenever booking is open for June.

-Finalize the Scholars Training resources, locations, trainer commitments, locations.

February 1: 5 months prior

-Send out the application review forms and guidelines to chapters.

March 1: 4 months prior

-Application deadline: chapters submit their materials for final review.

-You now have 3.5 months to put everything together.

-Step one is the preliminary quality control pass thru the chapter reviews to identify the obvious drops that don’t need to go thru to the next level of review. Arrange all the applications by continent then within that by the national chapter that reviewed them even if they weren’t from that country. Go through the chapter review rankings identifying any apps that were well below average for all reviewers or were not recommended for selection by the chapter and set them aside. Your goal is to get the final candidate pool down to around 100, which is about the maximum that the international committee and senior review process can handle for the selection of the final 15 scholars.

-Next step is to assemble the master spreadsheet summarizing those 100 applicants who passed into the final stage reviewby the international committee. Include all of their relevant data such as chapter scores and rankings and the cost estimates for airfare they are required to research as well as their promised contributions. Examples of the review spreadsheet are at:

01_2016_Review.xlsx is the most recent example scoring spreadsheet

Bear in mind that these scores are sensitive information for which we haven’t yet defined a release strategy. We’d want to make sure that candidates were ok with others seeing their confidential scores before we release it more widely.

There is no internal metadata for this spreadsheet so field dictionary is provided here:

Color codes used during review: Green = accepted into core group, Lite Green = standby

Dark grey = rejected, Lite grey = probably reject, Light/Dark purple = advanced training

Light blue = for advanced applicants or anyone else we want to help with fundraising, this indicates we will write a letter to the local distributor or some other donor they may be working with endorsing them and encouraging the distributor to support them

FIELDS: Applicant name, org, gender, country, email – obvious.

Air SFO: Their estimated airfare to the program, as vetted and checked by the chapter

Can Pay: What they have offered to pay to help with their airfare

Reqsted: The leftover amount they have requested to fulfill their airfare need

Other Exp: The total anticipated ground expenses for each scholar as determined by the program budget

Can Pay: What they have offered to pay to help with their ground expenses

Reqstd: The leftover amount they need to fulfill their ground expense needs

Tot-Requestd: The grand total of the amount they have requested to be able to come

TOTAL: the final total it will cost us for them to come (included because in the past some scholars came with earmarked additional funding from other NGOS so that commitment needed to be subtracted from their grand total requested in order to arrive at the total SCGIS cost)

CHAPTER: is the summary score of all chapter reviewers, on a scale from 0-30

SY is Sasha’s score

CC is Charles Score

FIN TOT is the sum total of all the final master reviewers

FIN is their final program ranking on a scale of 0-30

-Step three is to identify any applicant who only got one reviewer, or applicants who only got a numeric score without much narrative evaluation. These applicants will be a priority for additional review from the international committee and senior advisors.

-Step four is the initial phase of the final review, experts from the international committee, senior advisors review and comment on all applications and all reviews, scorings and comments by the other preliminary reviewers & chapters. Normally the applicant pool is divided up for assignment to senior reviewers according to country, interest and availability. The goal is to try for 3 reviews of each candidate, so for candidates who only had a single chapter review try to get 2 more senior reviews for them.

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-SENIOR REVIEW GUIDELINES: It’s important that senior advisors conduct this review in isolation from one another so as to preserve the maximum independence of thought in their evaluations. It’s also important that all senior reviews are need-blind, ignoring any of the applicant estimated costs data, to let their review focus entirely on the talent and leadership of the applicant rather than what country or NGO they are from and therefore what their airfare costs might be. Another guideline based on the policy that any prior scholar can apply to come back to the program as long as they have waited at least 2 years since their last participation. This is important because of the rapid changes in technology. However, and prior scholar will have a higher bar to meet in their scoring, in that they must show that since their return home, they have been very active in SCGIS leadership, creating or supporting a chapter, or helping train others, or qualifying for the Train the Trainer program.

March 12:

-STEP FOUR: Conduct the final in-person 3-day master review to identify the finalists, as follows:

- First identify the automatic accepts: Discuss anyone who got the highest possible score from all the expert reviewers, see if they were also top choices for their chapters, and put them in the accepted category. This is usually about 5-7 applicants and needs to be completed in around an hour.

- Next identify the automatic drops, discuss anyone who got the lowest possible score from all senior reviewers and ensure that there are not chapter reviewers who scored them highly or made narrative recommendations. These are automatic drops and can constitute 40-50% of a 120-person pool, depending on the year, the competitiveness, the care taken by the chapters in their preliminary review, many factors. Spend no more than an hour on these.

- Finally, the remaining 50 or so applicants will be the controversial ones, the ones where opinions were mixed, these are the ones you will need to spend the most time on and it can take up to an hour each person to argue through all of the points and issues with the person and their application in order to come to a fair decision. You may also need to send some applications back out to senior reviewers or chapters if additional clarification is needed in order to help arrive at a decision. The 3-part review process is most powerful at allowing you to concentrate your time on these controversial candidates who will require more time in order to arrive at a fair decision.

- The number of finalists you can admit before you hit your limit is typically based on the stated capacity of the core course, about 15 students. It is typically possible to get trainer permission for 17 students to allow for potential visa cancellations or other problems. Some countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda are notorious for visa problems. As of 2017 there will be 2 not 1 training tracks, each with a capcity for 15, so the practical limit here is likely to be financial.

- Another way to determine the limit is a natural break in the scoring between those who were clearly superior and deserving, even after the controversies are argued out, and the rest of the pack. Sometimes there will be a blank area in the rankings. This is a good chance to call that your cutoff and be done.

- Another aspect of this senior review, especially with the controversial candidates, is the idea of a “risky” candidate. This is someone who failed to get a superior score by any of the common guidelines, but is doing something so unusual, so innovative, or so difficult that they merit inclusion anyway. You are basically admitting that your review process isn’t perfect and rather than miss an unusual opportunity to add a potential leader or connect with a new region or a new community, it’s worth the risk to include them. This is also a valuable recognition that the conservation field and GIS are constantly changing and new approaches, new thinking, new ways of changing the world, can show up on your doorstep anytime and it’s worthwhile to be prepared to be open to those new ideas.

- ADVANCED PROGRAM one of the factors in final scoring is how well matched the scholar’s skills are to the level and material covered in the training, which covers an intro to intermediate area, but in a comprehensive manner including basic skills like Geodatabases and Projections that are frequently missing from common self-taught approaches. As a result there are two different scales to use when scoring a candidate for their suitability for the program, the basic scale and the advanced scale. For the basic you need to prove that there is basic existing familiarity with the software, basic ability to set up and run a project, basic ability to create maps and outputs, and basic ability to do online mapping. The best match for the core class is folks who are entirely self taught, even if they have advanced skills in advanced areas like python or web programming. The Advanced scale is for those who can demonstrate that they have had a sold and WELL-ROUNDED education in basic and intermediate desktop GIS and now are asking specifically for advanced training in Image Analysis, Programming and Statistics, which are the most common types of advanced requests. Applications who have demonstrated solid expertise, submitted very nicely done example map or web apps, and who are specifically requesting these kinds of advanced training, are a good match to that scale.

-As the final scholars are accepted there are financial decisions to make based on what program they are accepted into (Core or Advanced) expected airfare costs, the contributions they can make or believe they can make, the anticipated funding that might come to support them from their institution, and the anticipated ground costs of their training program. By default, ground costs for the absolute cheapest possible 4-5 week program are $2500-$3000 per person, but this depends upon their exact travel times, training and conference travel, homestay times and hotel times. This estimate also includes using rental vans and carpooling for transport. What you should be able to have at the time the final scholars are selected is an estimated overall cost to support the program.

-Once the final scholars have been selected is the time to assemble their names, countries and organizations into a short list and get a rough estimate how much money you have & need

March 15:

-By this time, you must know EXACTLY what you will be doing:

• training dates, locations, curriculum, etc.;
• other events;
• how many people you can handle;
• deadline for confirmations so you can reallocate awards to standby candidates if someone cancels;
• etc.

-You will be making a HARD commitment to the scholars in the award letters.

-Notify the winners.

-They now have roughly 3 months to obtain U.S. visas and book air tickets.

-1-2 days after the award letter: 1st mass email with program information and instructions for obtaining a U.S. visa.

March:

-start sending out mass emails. Time them well. No more than 2 mass emails during a week. Think carefully about structuring all the information.
You can send them at will, but don’t expect the scholars to absorb and meet your requests.

-If you plan to use vans, book them as soon as you can.

Also in March:

-Start working on EVERYTHING – homestays, posters, meals, shuttles, volunteers, logistics, conference registrations, etc. The deadline for everything is NOW.

April:

-If you plan to buy air tickets for travel to San Diego, start weighing your purchase timing options.

-If you plan to use UC buses, coordinate with Events team.

Mid May:

-make Asilomar reservation for the group. Coordinate with Conference Committee on deadlines etc.

Late May:

-Start laying out airport pick-up arrangements.

-Request training manuals printing and delivery (no less than 2 weeks before the training).

-Sign scholars up for UC bus.

June 1:

-Purchase health insurance

No less than one week before YOUR starting gun:

-Have your cash plan:

• Know how much you will need;
• Notify the bank of upcoming large withdrawal.
• Implement withdrawal;
• Know how you will structure handing out cash
• Know how you will structure overall cash handling throughout the program

No less than one week before each individual arrival:

-Provide arrival instructions to respective scholar(s).

Mid June:

-Arrivals & Training begins

Within the first week of training:

-Make an explanation of the software grants, have the scholars sign MLA’s, scan MLA front pages.

Mid training:

-Revise and adjust your cash handling plans for the rest of the program.

Second week of training:

-Ask for their preferences on rooming in San Diego, finalize your plan for use of the rooms.

No less than one week before ARRIVAL in San Diego:

-Reach out to the hotel and finalize your reservation

By end of the training:

-Start laying out plans for scholar departures after all the conferences.

July 10-14:

-UC 2017

July 16-19 (?):

-SCGIS conference

After the conference:

-Departures.