What are the specific benefits of presenting at Undergraduate Research Day?

Undergraduate Research Day enables you to meet other UMD community members excited about research and to share your research with the broader community. If you present at the event, you’ll further develop your capacity to communicate about your research orally, visually, and in writing. Equally important, Undergraduate Research Day provides an opportunity to become familiar with the research projects of other UMD undergraduates, hone your capacity to ask useful and probing questions of other researchers, and learn from the experience of observing other students present. Undergraduate Research Day attracts presenters and audience members from a wide range of fields, which means that it offers a particularly good chance to practice communicating about research with people outside your area of study and to learn about research being conducted beyond your field.

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Who is eligible to present at Undergraduate Research Day?

Undergraduate Research Day is an opportunity for undergraduates at the University of Maryland, College Park to share research and learn from the experience. Undergraduates whose projects have been approved for presentation by their research advisor and OUR can participate as presenters. Faculty, staff, graduate students, and researchers at other institutions may be listed on Undergraduate Research Day posters as research collaborators and advisors. However, the presenter(s) discussing a given project at the event should be undergraduates.  Undergraduates should also take the lead in authoring abstracts and designing posters for the event.

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What type of work can be presented at Undergraduate Research Day?

Undergraduates are welcome to present scholarly and creative work in all fields. This work may have been conducted as part of a campus course, research program, or internship, or it may have been undertaken at another institution during the presenter’s undergraduate years.

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Is it acceptable to propose to present a research project on which I am still working?

We welcome the presentation of ongoing research projects. We would ask that you have some results or outcomes ready to share with the Undergraduate Research Day audience; projects should be beyond the research design phase. If your project fits within those broad parameters, please ask the faculty member advising your project whether they feel the project is ready for presentation at Undergraduate Research Day. If they think it is, please submit a proposal!

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I worked on my project with other UMD undergraduates. Can we still share our work at Undergraduate Research Day if only some of us are available to present that afternoon?

Ideally, all of the UMD undergraduates who worked on your project would have the opportunity to present the project at the event. (In the case of large groups, you might need to divide your presentation session into shifts to enable everyone to present given the limited space that will be available in front of your poster.) At the same time, we understand that group members may have obligations that conflict with the event and cannot be rescheduled, and we do not require all group members to be presenters at the event.

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Undergraduate Research Day consists of two sessions, and presenters are generally expected to attend both sessions. I have a time conflict with one session that involves a class or other important commitment that cannot be rescheduled. Can I still submit a proposal to present?

 

We do not expect presenters to miss critical commitments that cannot be rescheduled (e.g., classes) to attend the entire event. You can still apply to present if you have a time conflict involving this type of commitment. You will have an opportunity to tell us more about your time conflict on the proposal submission form and to indicate the session in which you would be available to present. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to place you in the session that you identify, but we will be attentive to time conflicts when assigning students to sessions.

 

Undergraduate Research Day consists of two sessions, and presenters are generally expected to attend both sessions. I am part of a group of undergraduate researchers who would like to present a project at the event, but some of our group members have time conflicts with parts of the event. These conflicts involve classes or other important commitments that cannot be rescheduled. Can we still submit a proposal to present?

 

We do not expect presenters to miss critical commitments that cannot be rescheduled (e.g., classes) to attend the entire event. Your group can still apply to present if members have time conflicts involving this type of commitment. You will have an opportunity to tell us more about your group's time conflicts on the proposal submission form and to indicate the session in which your group prefers to present. If you face a situation in which some group members have conflicts with one session and other group members have conflicts with the other, you should discuss the issue as a group and come to a shared decision about which session will be listed as your preference on the form. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to place you in the session that you identify, but we will be attentive to time conflicts when assigning students to sessions. (Given that we cannot guarantee placement in a particular session, any group member interested in presenting should be listed on the proposal form, even if they have a conflict with the session that your group lists as its preference.)

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For answers to other questions related to Undergraduate Research Day, contact our-office@umd.edu.