Participate

Registration and abstract submission for the 2024 University Research Symposium (URS) are due by 11:59 pm CST on February 12.  

Once you submit your application, an email containing your abstract will be sent to your faculty mentor and any accompanying undergraduate student researchers you also listed in the form. Before applying, please revise your abstract thoroughly and get approval from your mentor and any accompanying undergraduate student researchers before submitting. 

March 4 – Virtual Research Presentations

To be eligible for cash prizes, the student must present during the Zoom sessions. 

The virtual presentations will be held via Zoom on March 4. Participants should submit an abstract and poster for the virtual sessions. During the Zoom, your poster will be displayed on the screen using a virtual gallery (set up and moderated by the URS zoom host). 

To participate in the URS Virtual Presentations: 

• Submit an abstract by February 12. Abstract submission forms are located under Participate →Abstract Submissions. (Click this link for Abstract Template)
• Prepare a poster using PowerPoint or a similar platform. 
• Submit .jpg of poster to the URS Google Drive by February 23: URS Virtual Posters
• Prepare a 10-minute presentation of your research poster (Virtual sessions will allow for 10-minute presentation and 3 minutes for questions). 

Creating a research poster: https://youtu.be/HIzk6FGrHow?si=YzYKyU5JfVUEJ4J9

March 5 – In-Person Research Presentations

To be eligible for cash prizes, the student must present during the in-person sessions

The in-person presentations will be held on the University of West Alabama campus on March 5. Participants should submit an abstract and bring a printed poster to the URS. 

To participate in the URS In-person Presentations:

• Submit an abstract by February 12. Abstract submission forms are located under Participate →Abstract Submissions. (Click this link for Abstract Template)
• Prepare a poster using PowerPoint or similar platform. Print your poster!
• Prepare a 10-minute presentation of your research poster.

Creating a research poster: https://youtu.be/HIzk6FGrHow?si=YzYKyU5JfVUEJ4J9

Presentation Judge (Throughout the March 1)

Sign up by emailing mmorsy@uwa.edu to let us know you are interested in judging at the event.

Judging will be done using a pen and a paper rubric.

All faculty members are encouraged to participate as presentation judge

To be eligible for cash prizes, the student must present during the Zoom sessions.

Sample of an abstract

Click on this link for Abstract_Template_URS 

Tips for Creative, Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Adapted from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln

A good presentation should include three essential features:

1. Tell people what you are going to tell them. Introduction and outline, in the beginning, are going to tell them that
2. Tell them the material. You should present the core materials in the necessary detail.
3. Tell them what you told them. This is the summary or conclusion of your presentation.

Tips for a good PowerPoint presentation:

1. Prepare a nice slide deck

• Use the slide master feature to create a consistent and simple design template.
• It’s OK to vary the content of your slides (e.g., bulleted list, 2-column text, text & image), but be consistent with other elements such as font, colors, and background.
• Simplify and limit the number of words on each screen. Use key phrases and include only essential information.
• Generally, no more than six words a line and no more than six lines a slide
• Avoid long sentences
• Larger font indicates more critical information
• Font size ranges typically from 18 to 48 point
• Use contrasting colors for text and background. Dark text on a light background is best. Patterned backgrounds can reduce the readability of text.
• Limit the number of slides. Presenters who constantly flip to the next slide will likely lose their audience. A good rule of thumb is one slide per minute.
• Limit punctuation and avoid putting words in all capital letters.
• Space on the slide will enhance readability.
• Avoid the use of flashy transitions such as text fly-ins. These features may seem impressive initially but are distracting and get old quickly.
• Overuse of special effects such as animation and sounds is distracting and may make your presentation seem less severe.
• Use good-quality images that reinforce and complement your message. Ensure your photos maintain their impact and resolution when projected on a larger screen.

2. Arrive early and be technically prepared

• Get to the room early and leave plenty of time for the technical setup and technical difficulties.
• Have several backup drives (including an online version (an email), if possible) to prepare you for anything!
• If possible, view your slides on the screen you will use for your presentation. Ensure that the slides are readable from the back row seats. Text and graphics should be large enough to read but not so large as to appear loud.
• Know how to practice moving forward AND backward within your presentation. The audience may ask to see the previous screen again.

3. Know more

• Be educated on more than just what you are sharing. That way, you can add points, speak candidly and confidently, and be prepared to answer any audience or teacher questions.

4. Share your passion with your audience

• Connect with your audience by showing your passion for your topic. Do this with the right tone, eye contact, and enthusiasm in your speech.

5. Pace yourself

• When student presenters are nervous, they tend to speed up their speech. However, this can be a problem because your speed may be distracting, hard to understand, and you may run under your time.

6. Rehearse thoroughly

• Do not just practice; rehearse your college presentation. Rehearse the entire delivery, including standing up, using gestures, and going through the slides.

7. Show your personality

• You don’t need to be professional to the point of stiffness during your college presentation.
• Don’t be afraid to show your personality while presenting. It will make your presentation more exciting and make you seem more approachable and confident.

8. Improvise

• You can’t be 100% certain what will happen during your presentation. If things aren’t exactly as expected, don’t be afraid to improvise and run off the script.

9. Pump yourself up

• Get yourself excited and full of energy before your college presentation! Your mood sets the tone for your presentation, and if you get excited right before, you will likely carry that throughout, and you will also make your audience excited about your topic.

10. Remember to pause

Pausing prevents filler words and helps you recollect your thoughts and can also be a powerful indicator of importance within your presentation.

11. Create “umm” alternatives”

• Try to avoid using filler words as they make you look unprofessional and uncertain. The best alternatives to “um” “like” and “so” are taking a breath or a silent pause to collect your thoughts.

12. Using your hands

• Using your hands makes your college presentation more exciting and helps to get your points across. Point at the slide, use common hand gestures or mimic a motion.

13. Eye contact

• Eye contact is one of the most critical presentation tips for students. Many students are nervous, so they look at their notes or their feet. You must show your confidence and engage your audience by making eye contact. The more presentations you give, the more eye contact will feel natural.
• Don’t read from your slides. The content of your slides is for the audience, not for the presenter.
• Don’t speak to your slides. It’s easy to be distracted by the content on your screen. A minor exception to this guideline is a need to draw your audience’s attention to a specific part of your slide. For example, you could use a pointer to identify a trend in a graph. Otherwise, there’s simply no reason to show your back.

14. The right tone

• The best public speakers vary their tone and pitch throughout their presentations. Try to change it up, and choose the right style for your message.

15. Tell a story 

• People love stories — they capture interest in ways that figures and facts cannot. Make your presentation relatable by including or presenting a story in a story format.

16. The power of humor

• Using humor in your college presentation is one of the best presentation tips for students. Laughter will relax you and the audience and make your presentation more attractive.

How to Give an Oral Presentation (Adopted from the Department of Biology, Indiana University Bloomington)

The goal is to help students prepare for professional talks, departmental seminars, and job seminars. The following points are essential when giving a seminar in any setting:

Content

• Don’t talk about too many projects in one talk.
• Never, under any condition, go overtime. The worst possible thing is that some audience is thinking about leaving instead of focusing on your brilliant summary.
• There is no problem with finishing reasonably early.
• Don’t stretch a 15-minute talk into a 20-minute talk.

Style

• Be yourself. If you are intense, be intense. If you are relaxed, be relaxed. If you are funny, be funny, but be careful. Humor is best used to make the audience remember something about the science.
• Speak more slowly than you think you need to.
• Basic slides are better than busy/cluttered slides with too much text or animations.
• If using animations to make text or figures appear/disappear or add emphasis, remember where the animations are located. Otherwise, unanticipated animations can surprise the speaker and break up the flow of the talk.
• Don’t apologize for your slides; get them right before you start.
• Your slides must be readable to the entire audience. If the people in the back row can’t read them, they are advised to throw lunch at you.
• Don’t say, “I put this slide in to remind me of….” It reminded you. Keep going.

Introduction

• Know what you are going to say, and make it punchy.
• Keep it short, but tell us why your talk interests a group of biologists.
• Tell your main points; remember, this is not a mystery show. You are educating your audience. Give them every opportunity to get to the main point.
• If you’re not going to talk about something, don’t bring it up only to say that you won’t talk about it.
• Show some slides of the plant/animal and the habitat in which it lives. Tell us why this organism is a good one for testing theory. Assume we know nothing about what you study or why you do it.

Methods

• Mention them briefly when necessary to explain the experimental results.
• Methods should be a small part of most talks. People who doubt your methods can ask questions, but most people will trust you.
• Don’t lose your audience with descriptions of DNA hybridization, multifactor repeated nested analysis of variance, and so on.
• Never go on and on about how hard the work was.
• Do not belabor your statistics.
• Use pictures or diagrams rather than words to describe methods when possible.

Results

• Leave the question at the top of the results slide to clarify which question is being answered by the data.
• Give only the MAIN results.
• Don’t show us DNA sequences unless the bits that need attention are indicated.
• Avoid showing statistical tables.
• Graph the results and indicate whether the treatments are or are not significantly different (p-value and R2 typically suffice).
• Briefly indicate how that result fits in with the expectation.
• Make sure the colors used in your graph are very distinct from one another.
• Pay attention to the axes labels. Make them enormous! Speaking of axes, state what they are when the graph first comes up. Then, explain the rest of the chart. Avoid “unconventional axes” that do not have the x-axis increasing to the right and the y-axis increasing toward the top of the graph.

Conclusions

• It should be directly related to the questions you set out initially. If you rejected some of the alternatives, then you did science. Make it clear which options are rejected and which remain.
• Always try to reconnect what was presented to the overall question. This may be obvious to the speaker or their lab mates, but this should be explicitly stated to the audience.
• There should be a slide that briefly summarizes your main points. Don’t give a long list of what you found.
• Let us know what you want us to remember. Make it implicitly clear that you are within a minute or two of taking questions.
• Spend enough time on this summary/conclusion slide so the audience can write down the main points.
• End the talk definitively. Say, thank you. Don’t fade off with some limp: “I think that is all I have to say.”
• Avoid unnecessarily long thank you slides. You do not need to read all 26 names on the slide. Even better, very briefly work acknowledgments into the methods slides where the people deserve credit.

Click here to submit an abstract.

Additional resources for writing an abstract

2014 University of Western Sidney Three-Minute Thesis Finals

Making the Most of Your Three Minutes for 3MT: The Three Minute Thesis by Simon Clews, Director, Writing Center, University of Melbourne

10 Tips on How to make Slides that Communicate your Idea, by TED Staff

Microsoft PowerPoint information

Creating a compelling slide presentation for scientific research

Faculty Engagement Opportunities

Research Advisor (before the symposium)

• Encourage students to present research projects

• Review and approve student abstract

• All faculty members are encouraged to participate as a Research Advisor

Presentation Judge

• Sign up by emailing mmorsy@uwa.edu to let us know you are interested in judging at the event.
• Judging will be done using a pen and a paper rubric.
• All faculty members are encouraged to participate as presentation judge

Present your lab research in person or via Zoom.

• Four 15-minute talks will be available for faculty, postdocs, and other professionals to present their research projects. This is an excellent opportunity to attract students to your school and/or your lab.