K.K. Barnes Competition
Rules and Regulations - Written Competition
Content of Papers
Any technical subject applicable to the solution of a problem or problems in
mechanization or engineering for agricultural, food, or biological systems will be
acceptable. The paper may be an assignment in a course in the student's major field or
one prepared especially for this competition or for publication elsewhere. Papers can
result from library research problems as well as experimental research work performed
by the student.
Requirements
All papers submitted for this competition shall meet the following requirements
1. Final Entry Date. Papers shall be received at ASABE headquarters no later than
six months after receipt of the first professional degree by the student.
2. Submission of entry. Paper entries may be submitted at any time leading up to
the March 25 entry due date. Send Paper entry in PDF file and email to the
attention of ASABE Awards Administrator, Sarah Cook, cook@asabe.org. It is
the entrants’ responsibility to verify that the PDF file appears as intended. Entries
submitted in hard copy via regular mail will not be accepted. Free PDF
converters are available such as CutePDF Writer.
3. Title Page. On the first page of the entry shall be stated the title of the paper, full
name of the contestant, name of school, date or anticipated date of first
professional degree, and name of the staff member who served as advisor for the
paper. Also, at the bottom, a signature block containing the signature of the
contestant, student branch faculty advisor (department head if no student branch
exists) and the date of signing. In the case of multi-authored papers, the first listed
author will be treated as the only author of the paper and will be the only one
recognized in competitive judging.
4. Second Page. The second page of each paper shall be a statement of how the
subject of the paper was chosen and whether the paper is a library research paper
or a report of experimental work in which the author contributed to the work
should be stated. Since the rules contemplate only individual entries,
acknowledgment of any co-authors or coworkers should be made on this page.
5. Organization of Paper. Papers will not be required to follow any specific outline
or be in any particular form. Presentation should follow a logical pattern and
conform to good professional paper or technical writing standards. Technical
writing guidelines as condensed from the Instructions to Authors are shown at end
of this Appendix.
Grading Procedures
The P-123 Committee on K. K. Barnes Student Paper Awards is a standing committee of
the ASABE. They have total responsibility for conducting this competition and grading
the submitted papers. Decisions of the committee made as indicated in this
announcement, shall be final.
1. Cutoff Date. On March 25 of each year, all the papers received by the Awards
Administrator will be forwarded to the Committee on K. K. Barnes Student Paper
Awards. All eligible papers received after March 25 of a particular year will be
included automatically in the next competition.
2. Grading System. Papers shall be graded according to the following schedule of
points:
Maximum Points
A.
Importance of the subject of the report in the field of
agricultural, food, or biological engineering or mechanization.
10
B.
Proper use and/or interpretation of data.
15
C.
Originality and/or thoroughness of study.
10
D.
Validity and worth of conclusions.
10
E.
Conformance to good paper and technical writing standards.
1. Clarity, simplicity and ease of reading
20
2. Style-organization, grammatical accuracy,
straightforwardness, coherence
20
3. Appearance and neatness, including quality of drawings,
charts and photographs
15
TOTAL
100
Record of Grades. The grade recorded for a particular paper shall be the normalized
grades accorded it by the committee members. The committee chair calculates
normalized results by calculating mean and standard deviation and then subtracting the
mean from each raw score and dividing the result by the standard deviation. Finally add
the normalized value from each judge for each participant and rank order of the
participants. Only grades for the top ten (10) papers need to be recorded for the ASABE
awards administrator. Recording of grades for the remaining papers shall be at the
discretion of the committee. The ASABE awards administrator will review the scoring
with the P-123 chair prior to notifying the contestants of their selection.
Notification of Grade. The grade and ranking of the scored contestants will be made
available to those who contact the awards administrator after April 25. Copies of this
list will be sent automatically to the scored contestants at their last known place of
residence. Those not receiving notification by April 29 may assume that their paper did
not place.
Nature of Awards
1. Invitation to the ASABE Annual Meeting. The authors of the top three student papers
will be invited to attend the ASABE Annual International Meeting and their meeting
registration fee waived.
2. At this meeting, they will present their papers in the oral competition.
3. Alternates. In the event one or more of the authors of the top three student papers
selected cannot accept the invitation to attend the international annual meeting, the
invitation will be extended to other contestants in the order in which they placed in the
competition.
4. The Committee reserves the right to not invite low quality papers to participate in the
oral portion of the competition.