Annual Meeting Web-Based Alternative

After careful consideration, we have decided to cancel the 2020 CGPR Meeting and Lecture Program, which had been scheduled for 25 & 26 March 2020 in Blacksburg.  We made this decision to help mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus, consistent with Virginia Tech guidance.

We are in the process of developing a web-based alternative that will accomplish much, although not all, of what an in-person meeting would accomplish.  We plan to provide the student research presentations with voice and synchronized slide advancement, as well as the research summary documents you are used to receiving at previous meetings.  The presentations can be viewed individually, so you won’t need to watch them all in one sitting.  We plan to do this for several other presentations, including the CGPR activity report and a self-introduction by our newest faculty member, Professor Sherif Abdelaziz.

Every year, we rely on the ideas you develop, present, and discuss in the New Initiatives Forum.  This year, we will set-up an online forum where you can post initiatives and comments.  After a review and comment period, we will conduct an on-line rank-ordered vote.  Following the voting period, we will compile the votes and show you the results in the same manner we have done at previous meetings.

This year’s lineup of speakers for the lecture program is very good, with interesting and informative lecture topics.  Our featured speaker this year is John Bachner, who served as executive director of ASFE (now GBA) for over 40 years.  John has agreed to provide us with a narrated version of his presentation, which we will post at the meeting website.  We will also seek narrated presentations from the other three speakers in the lecture program.

In addition, we will assist you in contacting students if you wish to discuss their research projects and/or employment opportunities.

Although we will greatly miss seeing you in person, we will try our best to provide you with the kind of information and experience that you have come to expect from the Annual CGPR Meeting and Lecture Program.  It will take a few weeks to set this up, and we will provide additional information when we are close to opening the website.

If you have any questions or need any additional information, please feel free to contact CGPR Director Adrian Rodriguez-Marek (540-231-5778, adrianrm@vt.edu), CGPR co-Director George Filz (540-231-7151, filz@vt.edu), or CGPR Office Manager Sandy Simpkins (540-231-5052, sandy@vt.edu).

Best regards,

Adrian and George