During their initial review of a proposal (completed before the program committee meeting), program committee members rate the overall quality of the proposal based on its relevance to AGS Annual Meeting attendees, the quality of the proposed speakers, and the quality of the proposed presentations. If a Program Committee member rates a proposal 3 on a scale of 1 – 5 with 1 being excellent during his/her initial review, s/he is asked to look at the proposal in terms of whether it has an interdisciplinary faculty member and whether it is ethnically and culturally sensitive. S/he is also asked to provide any general recommendations on speaker/topic modification and also on whether there is a need to modify the learning objectives or expected outcomes.

Following individual program committee member review, the scores are averaged and the Program Committee is asked to look at the top 40-50 submissions during its July Program Committee meeting using the same criteria. Lower scoring proposals are available to Committee member reference during the meeting.