Reflect and refresh at GWS2007!

We invite you to join us April 16–20, 2007, for “Rethinking Protected Areas in a Changing World,” the biennial George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites. GWS2007 will be a week of reflection, reconnection, and renewal along the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. Professionals from every field in natural and cultural resources will gather at GWS2007 to create America’s premier interdisciplinary meeting on parks, other kinds of protected areas, and cultural sites.

GWS2007 is your chance to catch up with old friends and colleagues, make important new contacts, get up-to-date on the latest innovations in park management, and stay current with research findings in your field. With our broad range of program offerings — including thought-provoking keynotes, paper and panel presentations, affinity meetings, and field trips — GWS2007 aims to be the park profession’s best all-around training value.

For 25 years the George Wright Society has hosted these biennial meetings, in concert with our long-time co-sponsors, the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, and conference supporter, Eastern National. Mark your calendars and make plans to spend a productive week at GWS2007. The benefits will last long after you’ve returned home.

Proposals are being accepted through October 6, 2006. Read on for more information and instructions on how to submit a proposal.

The conference format in brief

  • Plenary Sessions, in which all attendees come together to consider issues related to the theme of the conference. Plenary speakers are notable in their field.
  • Concurrent Sessions, with as many as nine running simultaneously, each lasting two hours. Concurrent sessions can take a range of formats, including paper presentations, and more audience-interactive formats such as panel discussions, debates, etc. You can propose to organize an entire session of Invited Papers, a session centered around a Panel Discussion, or else submit a proposal for an individual Oral Paper Presentation paper to be assigned to a session made up of papers on similar topics.
  • Day-Capper Sessions—a better way to cap off your day. In response to numerous suggestions from previous attendees, in 2005 we began offering Day-Capper Sessions as a way to minimize late-afternoon burnout. Day-Cappers are lively, audience-interactive, fun sessions with a more informal setting that run from 4:00–5:15 pm (instead of the usual 4:00–6:00 pm period). We are looking for creative people who have creative ways of exploring important issues, and who relish getting the audience involved. If that person is you, put in a proposal to organize a Day-Capper! (Some examples from the GWS2005 conference to get you going.)
  • Workshops, small-group working meetings open to all conference registrants on a first-come, first-served basis.
  • Side Meetings, small-group programmatic, business, or affinity meetings. Some side meetings are open to all conference registrants; others are by invitation only.
  • A Poster / Computer Demo Session, which runs continuously from Tuesday morning through Thursday afternoon of the conference week.
  • A one-day “Welcome to the Neighborhood” Exposition (Monday, April 16) of displays that highlight parks and related resources in the Twin Cities area and the Upper Midwest region. If your park or park-related organization is located in the Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, or the Dakotas, you can use the “Welcome to the Neighborhood” Exposition to introduce yourself to an international audience of GWS2007 attendees.
  • Field Trips, learning experiences integrated into the conference. Field trips are offered on Wednesday of the conference week so you can get out and learn about the Twin Cities and beyond. In most cases an additional fee is required.
  • Special Events such as a welcoming reception, silent auction, evening discussions, the GWS awards banquet, etc. For some events an additional fee is required.

Focus areas for the program

To help orient attendees to the program, sessions are grouped into four broad areas:

Preservation and Management

  • Conference sessions in this area focus on the practice of managing natural and cultural resources in parks, protected areas, and cultural sites. Emphases include hands-on methods for getting the job done, programmatic and regulatory matters that affect park management, and leading-edge developments in preservation technology and techniques.

Science, Scholarship, and Understanding

  • Conference sessions in this area focus on the use of scientific research to enhance our understanding and management of protected natural areas; on the use of scholarship in the humanities to enhance our understanding and management of cultural sites and cultural heritage in general; on the use of social sciences to understand park visitors and the sociopolitical background against which parks operate; and on techniques for making sure science and scholarship are delivered to front-line managers in a form they can use in their daily work.

Environmental Justice and Ethics

  • Conference sessions in this area focus on issues of equity as they relate to the use, understanding, and enjoyment of parks, protected areas, and cultural sites by people from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds; and on general issues of environmental ethics as they relate to parks, protected areas, and cultural sites.

Education, Communication, and Civic Engagement

  • Conference sessions in this area focus on the educational functions of parks, protected areas, and cultural sites. Emphases include park interpretive programs, the interface of parks with schools and institutions of higher learning, the principles and practices of building appreciation for park resources among the general public, and training needs for park professionals. “Civic engagement” refers to active attempts by parks and museums to engage the public on controversial topics in order to foster the kind of informed discussion that is critical to the functioning of multicultural, democratic society.

How the program is put together

The conference is organized by a Conference Committee convened by the George Wright Society. The Committee chooses the overall conference theme, organizes plenary sessions around that theme, and issues the Call for Proposals you are reading now. The Committee then evaluates abstracts received in response to the Call for Proposals, selecting a portion of them to make up the conference program.

Putting together the concurrent session line-up is the biggest challenge in setting up the conference program. The Committee typically must sift through several hundred abstracts, crafting concurrent sessions from individual proposals for Oral Paper Presentations (and finding someone to chair those sessions) while also evaluating proposals to organize Concurrent Sessions, Side Meetings, Workshops, etc.

In selecting proposals, the Committee looks at several factors:

  • The quality of the abstract, in terms of both content and presentation.
  • The goal of including a mix of cultural and natural resource interests in the overall conference program. Particular attention is given to topics that cut across cultural and natural resource interests.
  • The goal of representing a range of protected area agencies and philosophies in the overall conference program.
  • The need to make concurrent sessions internally coherent.

Competition for places on the program can be keen. To facilitate the participation of as many people as possible, the Conference Committee asks that individuals propose to take part in no more than three sessions in any capacity as a presenter (whether as lead author, secondary author, session organizer, session panelist, etc.).

How to submit a proposal

We welcome proposals for Concurrent Sessions (Invited Papers or Panel Discussions), Day-Cappers, Workshops, Side Meetings, Oral Paper Presentations for assignment to concurrent sessions, Posters, Computer Demos, and Exhibits. Abstracts are welcome on any topic related to the Focus Areas described above. The deadline for proposals is October 6, 2006. Submitting an abstract is an easy two-step process. Get started here.

Interested in Chairing a Session?

We are always looking for volunteers willing to chair concurrent sessions that have been put together from proposals for individual Oral Paper Presentations received in response to this Call for Proposals. Session chairs are responsible for: (1) touching base with the presenters before the conference (the George Wright Society coordinates this); and (2) seeing that individual presentations run in on time and in an orderly fashion; and (3) coordinating the Q&A period at the end of each presentation. It’s a great way to meet new colleagues!  If you are interested, please check the box on the on-line abstract submission form and fill in your area(s) of interest/expertise in the space provided.

Conference proceedings

Selected papers from the conference will be published, either in a Conference Proceedings, in the GWS’s journal, The George Wright Forum, or both. Click here for more information and authors’ instructions.