ERNEST E. WILLIAMS RESEARCH GRANTS ESTABLISHED

The Herpetologist's League Board of Trustees has initiated the Ernest E. Williams Research
Grants for graduate students, named in honor of the late Ernest E. Williams, first
Distinguished Herpetologist of HL and an eminent and honored faculty member at Harvard
University.

Five grants of $500.00 (maximum amount each) will be awarded in 2010, one for each of
the following categories:

Behavior
Conservation
Ecology
Physiology
Morphology/Systematics

The Herpetologist's League requests assistance in reviewing and judging proposals
submitted for these grants. The proposals are limited to 1200 words. If you volunteer to
judge, it would be helpful if you will judge all of the applicants for the category you
choose. We hope to have 3-5 judges for each category.

Submitted proposals will be sent to judges by the first week of February at the latest.
Judges will need to submit their decisions by the end of March. Winners of the inaugural
grants will be announced at the joint meetings in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2010.

A unique feature of the HL grants is that written feedback will be provided for each
applicant, in an effort to assist each student in grant writing and to provide a service that
will create more student interest in HL. Therefore, each judge will be responsible for
scoring proposals according to a template (provided). In addition, judges will also have the
task of providing a review of each proposal. We anticipate perhaps a half page of
comments and a "track changes" type response for each proposal. These, of course, will
be anonymous and will be collated and given to the students.

If you are willing to serve as a reviewer for the inaugural year of the Williams Research
Grants for graduate students, please respond to the Committee Chiarperson and indicate
a first and second choice for which category you would prefer to judge.

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact the Committee Chairperson (below).

Thank you in advance for your interest.

Erin Muths
Chairperson
Ernest E. Williams Research Grant Committee
Herpetologist's League
erin_muths@usgs.gov