The South Central Chapter of ARPAS hosted their first Graduate Student Competition in conjunction with the Four States Cattle Conference on December 7 in Texarkana, Arkansas. 

The primary goal of this committee is to focus on future activities that enhance membership in ARPAS, particularly the South Central Chapter, and to ensure that members are getting something out of their membership. The chapter felt that a graduate student oral competition would accomplish this goal and give the graduate students submitting abstracts to the 2016 Southern Section Meetings a chance to practice. 

We had nine graduate students present excellent abstracts at the graduate student competition, representing Louisiana State University, Texas A&M University, University of Arkansas, and West Texas A&M University. A four-judge panel evaluated the presentations and abstracts. A $500 scholarship was awarded to the first-place winner, donated by the Four States Cattle Conference, to be used for reimbursement for attending the 2016 Southern Section Animal Science Meetings in San Antonio, Texas, in February. We had an excellent group of graduate students present, and several members learned of some of the research being conducted around the four-state region. In addition, we had six new graduate students take the ARPAS exam to become an ARPAS member. The South Central ARPAS Chapter Graduate Student Competition was sponsored by Cargill. We would like to thank Gary Estes of Cargill for support in our program.

The chapter held a general meeting before the competition to discuss what the members wanted out of this chapter. General consensus was that the Four States Conference was a great venue for the South Central Chapter to host an event with and that the graduate student competition was a great platform. It was also suggested that there will be no membership dues toward the chapter at this time but that any future meetings will require a registration fee.

Ryon S. Walker, ARPAS South Central Chapter President