Submissions

Call for Submissions

The Tribal EPA & U.S. EPA Region 9 Annual Conference is looking for dynamic, relevant, innovative, and exciting content from tribal and U.S. EPA presenters for this year’s Tribal EPA & U.S. EPA Region 9 Annual Conference.

While we welcome traditional panel presentations, we are also asking that you consider ways to make your session interactive and engaging for participants. As you develop your proposal, consider the different formats you can choose for sharing your knowledge and pick the one that you think will work best to keep your audience focused, involved, and active.

If you are ready to submit your proposal, please fill out the Submission Form below.

The deadline for submissions is August 16, 2024. We will announce which submissions have been selected by September 13, 2024.

Submission Form

The deadline for submissions is August 16, 2024. We will announce which submissions have been selected by September 13, 2024.

Session Types

Panel

Roundtable

Training

Workshop

Poster

Think Tank

Video on Demand

Panels are traditional paper presentations organized around a main topic or theme, with 3-5 panelists giving 15-20 minute presentations followed by a brief Q&A session The panel is best for sharing research results, presenting information about a specific aspect of a broad topic area, or reporting project outcomes. The panelists will usually use PowerPoint or other visuals and sometimes provide handouts. Other than the Q&A period, panels do not allow for much audience interaction but can be an efficient way to convey focused information within a topic area.

Roundtables, like panels, are focused on a main topic area or theme; however, rather than individual presentations, roundtables are an organized discussion. The roundtable participants bring their expertise to the discussion, with a facilitator leading them through questions or topics in a conversational manner. Attendee interaction and engagement with the participants is a key feature of roundtables, as the facilitator will invite questions and comments from the audience throughout the session. The result is a more intimate and wide-ranging conversation.

Trainings are step-by-step instructional presentations on how to achieve a specific task, such as writing a grant proposal or developing a budget. Usually conducted classroom-style, participants will be guided by the instructor through the general process of completing a particular goal. Trainings can be relatively specific – for example, how to develop a GAP workplan – but they are instructional rather than hands-on in nature.

Workshops are a step up from trainings in terms of participation. Workshops provide an opportunity for hands-on activity and may even take place outside the traditional conference break-out room. Workshops give participants the chance to learn by doing. This can be anything from producing a custom slide template in PowerPoint in a workshop on how to create good presentations to labeling bottles and creating chain of custody documents for a water sampling workshop.

For those who want to present on a specific project, proposal, idea, or outcome, but don’t want to participate in a live session, the poster session is a great alternative. This year, we are having posters both in person and online, which means you can submit a poster proposal even if you can’t attend in person.

Do you want to have some time to get together with other specialists from your media area and have an informal discussion about ideas, issues, or frustrations? The Think Tank is intended as a casual, open forum where media specialists can help one another brainstorm ideas and solutions. It does not require formal presentations or a set agenda. If you are interested in organizing a Think Tank for your media area, you can send us a simplified proposal to let us know. If we receive more than one for the same media area, we’ll just put them together!

*The Video on Demand (VOD) format will be pre-recorded only and no live presentations.

In the Video on Demand (VOD) format, your video be uploaded to the Tribal EPA Region 9 Conference website and the Tribal EPA Region 9 Youtube page for participants to view on their own schedule.

Do you have ideas or expertise to share, but you can’t do your presentation live? Video on demand (VOD) may be the answer for you. This is an especially great format for self-paced training sessions, since it allows participants to pause, rewind, or re-watch on their own schedule. It’s also a great option for providing support for new Tribal environmental professionals who may still have no idea what RTOC stands for or what a QAPP is. Video on demand sessions will be available during and after the conference through the Tribal EPA Region 9 Conference website and on the Tribal EPA Region 9 Youtube page.

Topics

Topics are broad categories that encompass the classic media areas such as air, water, and solid waste, as well as subjects such as climate change, grants, and consultation. When you submit your proposal, you will be able to choose up to three topic areas. Remember, topic areas are broad. If you want to present on a topic that doesn’t fit into any of our predetermined topic areas, you can specify under “Other,” but the selection committee may decide to categorize your presentation under one of the existing topics.

Keywords

Keywords allow you to get specific about your topic. For example, if you chose “water” and “pollution prevention” as topics, your keywords may be “non-point source” and “sampling.” Keywords should be short and to the point. You may include up to five keywords in your proposal. Again, the selection committee may decide to refine your keywords.

Outcomes

We want your attendees to know what they will be learning or taking away from your session, which is why we are asking you to provide at least three session outcomes. Outcomes should be focused on actions or results. For example, if you are conducting a training on household hazardous waste, your session outcomes might look like this:

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

Describe different types of household hazardous waste
Produce HHW inventory checklists
Develop an HHW disposal program

Your outcomes should use verbs that relate to how attendees will remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, or create an action. Use the Outcome Keywords table to help you craft your session outcomes.

Levels of Expertise

While this won’t apply to every session, we understand that some sessions might be geared towards a particular level of expertise. This is your spot to define who you are targeting with your presentation. If you don’t want to define a level of expertise, just choose Not Applicable.

Audio/Visual Needs

Every breakout room will be equipped with a full suite of audiovisual equipment, including screens, projectors, laptops, and microphones. We will also be live streaming the sessions for our remote participants. If you have a special A/V need, this is the place to let us know.

Next Steps

We are excited about receiving this year’s proposals! We expect to get a lot of submissions, which means we may not have room for them all. Rather than packing the schedule with six or seven breakouts at the same time, we plan to choose the highest-quality proposals and schedule them into a lighter, more efficient, and more effective agenda that will allow people to attend as many sessions as possible. If we don’t choose your proposal for a live session, you may also have the option of tailoring your proposal into a poster or a video on demand.

Because of the amount of effort required to review and rank proposals, we are setting a hard deadline of August 16, 2024 for submissions. We will notify you whether we have accepted your proposal. Once accepted, we will send you further instructions for uploading your presentation and any supplemental materials to Accelevents.