Call for Symposia

OVERVIEW & SECTIONAL SPONSORSHIP

BOTANY 2008 will be a joint meeting with the Canadian Botanical Association/L’Association Botanique du Canada. It will be held on the University of British Columbia campus in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, July 26 – 30, 2008. Societies participating in BOTANY 2008 will include: the American Fern Society (AFS), the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT), the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and the Canadian Botanical Association/L’Association Botanique du Canada (CBA/ABC). The theme for BOTANY 2008 is “Botany without Borders."

Submission of Symposia Proposals - Deadline: October 15, 2007

Members are encouraged to organize symposia for the annual meeting. Each proposed symposium must have a coherent, timely, preferably cross disciplinary, theme. The sequence of speakers and progression of ideas should be considered carefully. Symposia will be half-day programs consisting of six leading speakers in the thematic area. Individual presentations are 30 minutes in length (inclusive of questions). In addition, the symposium program may include other components, such as a separate introduction, summary or discussion. The proposed format for each symposium is outlined in the timetable below and is as follows: 15 min introduction (optional), three symposium speakers at 30 minutes each, coffee break, three symposium speakers at 30 minutes each followed by an optional Summary or Discussion.

Symposia must be approved and sponsored (in name and/or through financial support) by at least one disciplinary Section of the BSA and/or Botany 2008 Partnering Organization. Sponsorship can be requested from more than one BSA Section and/or Botany 2008 Partnering Organization, as cross disciplinary/multi-sectional symposia are strongly encouraged.

A preliminary proposal should be submitted for review and action by the BSA Section(s) and/or Botany 2008 Partnering Organization(s) involved prior to completing this form. This includes "requests for" and "agreement of" any and all funding. - securing funding agreements is the responsibility of the symposium organizers. Botany 2008 will only provide funding for symposium with Sectional/Organizational approval.

BSA Sections and/or Botany 2008 Partnering Organizations may have different policies, guidelines, and deadlines for handling symposium proposals, which can be determined by contacting the appropriate sectional and/or partnering society program organizer. Again, all are welcome to submit proposals and take part in this process. We strongly encourage cross-sectional and cross-societial collaboration.

As noted above, proposals should demonstrate a high level of organization and indicate whether sponsorship requested is in name only, or with financial support. Section chairs, in consultation with section officers and BSA program organizers, reserve the right to eliminate proposals that do not meet the level of development and thematic emphasis described above and are not relevant to their section. Our target is to offer two excellent symposia during each session, therefore we will select 12 proposals that best fit into the three day program.

Submission of symposium proposals should be conducted on-line using the “Electronic Symposium Proposal Submission Form” on the BOTANY 2008 web site: http://www.2008.botanyconference.org/2008Calls/2008ls_Symposia.php. Copies of the proposals will be sent electronically to the sender and the BSA Program Director. The deadline for receiving symposium proposals is October 15, 2007.

Electronic Symposia Proposal Submission Form

For additional information or questions, please contact the appropriate program director:

And/Or your sponsoring BSA Sectional Program Chair (www.botany.org/governance/sections.php).

Questions about the Conference program should be directed to the
BSA Meetings Manager:
Johanne Stogran
Botanical Society of America Meetings Office
2813 Blossom Ave
Columbus, OH 43231
Tele: (614) 899-9356
Fax: (614) 895-7866
E-mail: johanne@botany.org