The Education Law Consortium invites students from all academic disciplines to submit a paper for publication in Volume 3 of the the Education Law and Policy Forum, an electronic journal launched in Fall, 2005, and for presentation at the third annual national student conference hosted at the Institute of Higher Education, University of Georgia, on September 21-22, 2007.

Papers may be on any topic related to law or policy in education, including both K-12 and higher education. Submissions are due, sent electronically, by Tuesday, May 29, 2007 @ 5p Eastern to <edlaw@uga.edu>.

The 2007 national conference will begin with a reception on Friday evening, September 21 and conclude at 5p on Saturday, September 22. The conference may include up to 25 students, divided roughly evenly between those in education and those in law.

Participants will present their papers in plenary sessions throughout the day on Saturday. The conference organizers will group papers by themes, presented in six 60-minute sessions of three or four papers each. Each session will have a discussant, a national expert on the session topic from a leading graduate or law school. We will invite members of the University of Georgia community and local practitioners and scholars engaged in education law to the conference.

The conference will provide food and lodging for the students during the two-day conference. Students will be responsible for their own transportation to Athens. The conference organizers will encourage deans, chairs, and directors to cover the travel expenses for their students selected for the conference.

About the Competition

The Education Law and Policy Forum is interested in papers written by graduate and professional students nationally, including in their education law and policy courses.

Eligibility

Papers may be on any topic related to law or policy in education, including both K-12 and higher education. The competition is open to students enrolled in a university graduate or law program as of April 1, 2007. Thus May or August, 2007 graduates may participate in the May, 2007 competition and September, 2007 conference along with presently enrolled students.

Submitting

Submissions are due, sent electronically, by Tuesday, May 29, 2007 @ 5p Eastern to edlaw@uga.edu. We will not consider late submissions. Authors must include the following information in the body of the e-mail message in which they attach their paper:

• Name of Author(s)
• Institution
• School or Department
• Mailing Address of First Author
• E-Mail Address of First Author
• Degrees Earned and Expected, Including Year, Discipline, and Institution, of Each Author
• Name, Mailing Address, and E-Mail Address of Dean, Chair, or Director

The Education Law Consortium will announce decisions by July 1, 2007, notifying those who have submitted by electronic mail as well as their dean, chair, or director to encourage their support of travel to the conference.

Guidelines

The guidelines for paper submitted are straightforward:

• There is no page limit for papers.
• Papers must include an abstract of no more than 100 words.
• Papers may be individually or jointly authored, but the conference can only cover the expenses of one student per paper.
• Papers must be submitted in Microsoft Word.
• Papers must be in a 10-point sans serif font such as Arial or Helvetica, be double-spaced, have numbered pages at centered at the bottom, and use 1.25 inch margins all around. We encourage authors to limit formatting used in papers submitted to what is necessary.
• Block quotations must be single-spaced, indented 0.5 on both the right and left margins.
• Figures and tables should be embedded in text, if practical, and not included as appendices.
• Authors may use any citation format that they wish – blue book, MLA, Chicago Manual, APA. They must use the format correctly and be consistent throughout their paper.
• Authors may use endnotes or footnotes, but must do so consistently throughout the paper. The citation format that authors use will determine this, in part. For example, APA uses endnotes; blue book uses footnotes.
• Papers must include a bibliography of all sources cited, but only of sources cited.
• The Forum encourages authors to take advantage of the opportunities that come with presenting work in an electronic format, such as embedding into their narratives links to primary documents or related web sites.

Please refer any questions to: edlaw@uga.edu