SSA Conference Guidelines

Acceptable Work for Presentation at Science, Society, and the Arts

About Colloquium Readings

About Presentations Proposals

Poster Presentation Guidelines

Important Dates

Eligibility

What kind of work is acceptable for presentation at Science, Society, and the Arts?

Research or creative work in any discipline is acceptable. The primary purpose of Science, Society, and the Arts is to provide the W&L community a chance to share the fruits of the tough days and long nights devoted to academic endeavors that are usually only ever seen by a single professor. What is important is that the work demonstrates your independent thinking and serious effort to do quality work. This is not meant to exclude group projects or co-authored projects which might demonstrate the independence and hard work of group members.

Both law and undergraduate students are invited to make original work presentations at SSA. Law students might consider presentations based on law review notes they have written or are writing, as well as other sorts of projects involving independent work. Undergraduate students might think about presenting work that comes out of big term papers or projects.

The work you present does not need to be the sort of quality that would be expected of an honors thesis or a law review article. But a paper you wrote for one class and think might someday be good thesis or law review material would be a great basis for a presentation. And, of course, more involved independent projects such as theses (or pieces of theses) are also welcome. Your work does not need to be perfect, if is thoughtful and carefully executed. Conferences are designed to give scholars a chance to share work that is not yet in its most complete form and to benefit from exchanging ideas with others who have the courage to share their own less-than-perfect projects.

Science, Society, and the Arts is also a place to read short stories or poems you have written, to display your best painting or sculpture, or to give a musical or dramatic performance. Are you writing a play for a thesis? Have you composed a piece of music that you would like to have performed? Have you written essays based on study abroad experience? Any of these might be good work for presentation. Presentations that demonstrate how what you are learning in the classroom can be applied in “real” life are also appropriate for the conference. Think about whether you might be able to make a poster or given a short talk about the work done in law clinics, in poverty program internships, or as part of other service endeavors, for example.

What is a colloquium reading?

The colloquium reading is an unusual chance to celebrate the reading and discussion that can be done beyond the classroom walls, a chance to explore the great potential of sharing an academic community. The colloquium part of the conference is sort of like a simultaneous meeting of many different book clubs – a reading festival! Interested students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to select readings (novels, essays, poems, biographies, scholarly articles, etc.) they would like to share with others. There are no fixed limits (other than a basic sense of public decency) on the sorts of readings to be considered.

Propose your reading suggestion by June 6, 2008 with a short description of the reading and a sentence or two explaining why it will be a good one for group discussion The conference organizers will choose approximately 25 suggested texts to be the topics of 90-minute, small-group discussions on conference day. Generally those who have suggested the selected books will open and moderate the discussions, but it is also acceptable to offer a joint colloquium proposal in which two or three individuals work together to propose a book and moderate the conference discussion of it.

The list of selected colloquium texts will be presented in fall 2008, and selected texts will be available at a great discount to those who sign up to participate in a conference-day colloquium (February 27, 2009). The colloquium format provides a good way to share your interests with others at the conference, even if you don’t have a research project you would like to present. Moreover, those who participate in the reading discussions get a chance for a free or nearly-free book and some provocative summer reading.

About Presentation Proposals

As is the practice in the academic conferences faculty attend, students will be selected to participate in the conference on the basis of presentation proposals they submit. These are short summaries of the work potential presenters have done. Proposals give organizers a means of evaluating how serious presenters are about their work. Proposals also help organizers arrange a conference program in which different types of work are presented at the best time and in the best venue. Students don’t need to have their work in its final shape at proposal time because there will still be opportunities for changing it before the November conference, but when you make a proposal, you should be certain you will have completed work by February 27, 2009.

The proposal application process for Science, Society, and the Arts will be conducted online beginning in September 2008 and continuing through the end of January 2009; however, if you know you have work you would like to present, you may do most of the application work now. Proposal applications will require your contact information and a brief description of the work you wish to present (250 to 400 words). Presenters may request to make their presentations in a typical conference panel format or in a poster session. (Performers or artists who need display space or performing venues will have an opportunity to describe their needs in the proposal form.) Poster sessions are most commonly used by scholars in the hard sciences while those in the humanities and social sciences most frequently use panels on which four to five presenters give 20-minute talks on their work. In the poster sessions, presenters stand by their posters, explaining their work to an audience moving around a room in which a number of poster presenters are set up. In the panel sessions, audiences choose a panel they hope to see by looking at a program listing the panel’s title and the papers to be presented. Conference organizers usually try to do their best to put panelists with similar research on the same panel. Panelists may simply talk about what they’ve done, or they may combine their talk with audiovisual materials. Creative presenters might choose to do a reading of their work. Each presentation format will leave the audience with the chance to ask questions. We don’t have any strict rules about which presentation format is most appropriate for different types of work, so think about what would work best for you.

Poster Presentation Guidelines

Poster sessions involve many people milling around, listening, discussing and learning about the work of the presenters, sharing their ideas and experiences. There will naturally be groups that form around certain posters where the presenter repeatedly gives a mini-talk about the work she or he conducted while other posters seem to draw little interest from the crowd. Thus there are two key purposes of your poster: catching the interest of persons walking by and then aiding in the explanation you give of your research. People will pass by your poster unless there is something to attract their attention. Your hook should be some interesting picture, figure or provocative title---often in the form of a question. Once you have their attention, you need to have a logical flow for the poster that allows it to be read by others without your input, but which, just as importantly, provides key figures for you to give your mini-PowerPoint presentations. When explaining your research you do not want to be in the situation of saying, “I don’t have a figure for this but if you imagine…” As you practice your presentation, if you find you need a figure then put it in the poster.

1. Preparation
   
   The arrangement should be displayed in a neat and orderly manner with a logical progression of ideas (just as you would with a PowerPoint presentation).
   
   The poster should be as concise as possible while conveying all information necessary to the understanding of the project. Less writing and more visualization is best.
   
   Typical poster headings will vary depending on whether your work is experimental, theoretical, modeling, or synthesis/interpretive work. Nonetheless, good posters generally include most of the following headings: names and affiliation of investigators, abstract, objective, background (relevant theory, previous work, regional setting), hypothesis, methods (experimental procedure, approach, field techniques), results (experimental results, analysis, comparison of models to observed), the most important conclusions (relevance for the science, implications for further work), acknowledgements and references.
   
   Make sure that the writing on the poster is visible from about 5 feet away. Your audience will not necessarily be close to the poster. This will probably mean a 30 pt minimum for text.
   
   Figures should have captions that plainly explain the figure. Many of your audience will only look at the abstract and figures in your poster. The results section should include graphs (with axes labeled) or other visual representations of actual data. Tables are generally not as effective in a poster. Models should emphasize the scientific importance, not your proclivity to make things look pretty. If you have done field work, then field photos are useful (people want to see the actual area). If you have conducted field work, you must have a location map and then a local map.
   
   
2. Practice and Presentation
   
   It is recommended that the poster be completed at least one week prior to the presentation date. This is very important since it allows the material to be laid out to simulate the final poster appearance, keeping in mind size, readability and organization. You can then find out what you need to change/add.
   
   You should practice presenting the poster and become comfortable with all aspects of the poster so as to be better able to explain the study by utilizing the illustrations. When presenting you should also be prepared to elaborate on any aspect of the study, to answer questions about the project, and to articulate the study’s relevance to the discipline. Familiarity with the applications of the project is also useful knowledge. Presenters should be prepared to discuss future work that might be useful to advance our understanding of this field.
   
   Be prepared for the question “what is the bottom line?” What people mean is “give me a quick summary of what you did, what you learned and why it is important.” If you answer well and briefly (in a couple of sentences), then they may want to hear/read your full spiel.
   
   The presentation should be set up in plenty of time before the actual presentations are to begin.

Final Note: Consider your audience for the meeting. If it is mostly scientists in your field, then jump right in with the work and use the vernacular of your field at will. However if it is an audience with varied expertise you will want to give more background and simplify or define your terms and concepts. You impress no one by using terms they don’t know; you just turn people off.

Important Dates

Conference Day: Friday, February 27, 2009 (undergraduate classes cancelled)

Deadline for Colloquium Proposals: Proposals will be accepted until colloquium sessions are filled or until October 31, 2008, whichever comes first.

Deadline for Research, Creative Writing, Visual, or Performing Arts Proposals: January 19, 2009 (Proposal acceptance opens in September 2008.)

Eligibility

Any member of the Washington and Lee University student body, faculty, or staff, in both the Undergraduate and Law programs.