Undergraduate Research Symposium

Register:

• Complete the Symposium Presenter Registration Form.
• Presenter Registration Deadline: TBD
• Presentation Submission Deadline: TBD

NOTE: ACE Talk applicants MUST register and submit their application materials by Sunday, April 6th, 2025.

The ACE Talk application is an option within the Symposium presenter registration form:

• The 3 ACE Talk awardees will be notified by April 11th.
• The ACE Talk rehearsal will be held on April 17th, from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m. (location TBD). Awardees will schedule a 30-minute time slot during that time to rehearse.
• The ACE Talk presentation event will take place on Friday, April 25th, from 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Location: Gray-Little Hall (room TBD).

When presenters register, they may opt to have their presentation evaluated by a judge. The award amounts are listed below.

Outstanding Presentation Award Amounts: 

• One Presenter: $50 award 
• Up to 5 Group Presenters: Split $50 award 
• 6+ Group Presenters: $10 awarded per group member 

Present your creative work in a pre-recorded 10-minute artist's talk or performance. 

You will create a 10-minute presentation and voiceover for your presentation explaining your work. Presenters will generate a link of the video voiceover of your presentation and then upload the link of your video to the Symposium by ForagerOne event site via the submission form.

The submission form link is automatically sent to the presenter's email address once registration is submitted.

View the online and in person poster and oral presentation guides and rubrics to get started!

Prepare a poster (View KU poster templates.) describing your creative work and create a 2-3 minute poster talk and voiceover your video voiceover of your presentation and then upload the link of your video to the Symposium by ForagerOne event site via the submission form.

The submission form link is automatically sent to the presenter's email address once registration is submitted.

View the online and in person poster and oral presentation guides and rubrics to get started!

Present your research in a 10-minute slideshow and voiceover of your presentation.

Presenters will generate a link of your video voiceover of your presentation and then upload the link of your video to the Symposium by ForagerOne event site via the submission form.

The submission form link is automatically sent to the presenter's email address once registration is submitted.

View the online and in person poster and oral presentation guides and rubrics to get started!

Prepare a poster (view KU poster templates) describing your research.

You will create a 2-3 minute poster talk and voiceover for the online event of your presentation explaining your poster. For online presentations, you will generate a link of your video voiceover of your presentation and then upload the link of your video to the Symposium by ForagerOne event site via the submission form.

The submission form link is automatically sent to the presenter's email address once registration is submitted.

View the online and in person poster and oral presentation guides and rubrics to get started!

View KU-affiliated poster printing options.

View the online and in person poster and oral presentation guides and rubrics to get started!

The Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships would like to encourage students to read through the presentations that will be posted through the Undergraduate Research Symposium or attend the in-person presentation events to learn about the great research that their peers are conducting. We'd like to assist instructors who offer class credit for their students to view student presentations by collecting student feedback forms and notifying instructors which of their students filled them out.

How it works:

The majority of presentations for the Undergraduate Research Symposium will be online at Symposium by ForagerOne. Students who would like to receive extra credit for a qualifying class will submit an online feedback form for four different presentations, as well as answer a reflection question.

Students getting extra credit for a class for viewing Symposium presentations will:

1. Go to the presentation section on the event website.
2. Pick four different presentations to view; you can give feedback on any type of student presentation (ACE Talk, Oral Presentation, Artist’s Talk, etc.). 
3. Keep in mind that the feedback may be shared (anonymously) with presenters, so keep your comments constructive! 
4. Download a copy of the MS Word feedback form to record your feedback for each presentation. You will cut and paste your feedback for each presentation on the online extra credit form.
5. Go to the online extra credit form to submit your feedback for extra credit.

Students will visit the Symposium event website and/or attend one of the in-person events to view presentations.

• All extra credit submissions must be received by 11:59pm on Sunday, April 27th if they are to be forwarded to the student's instructor. The Center will email the instructor the list of students who filled out the online Extra Credit form for their course.
• Students should complete their feedback forms individually (not with other classmates); the work you turn in must be your own and in your own words.

For Instructors: 

If you are planning on offering this extra credit option to your students, please email curf@ku.edu by 4/14/25. Please include the name of the class and the number of students enrolled so we can get your class information onto the submission forms that extra credit students will use.

The Undergraduate Research Symposium will have an online component, and we are looking for volunteers to serve as judges! Judges will evaluate students' online presentations the week of the event and submit a rubric with written feedback for each student.

We encourage graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from different disciplines at KU to volunteer to serve as a judge. No prior judging experience is required, and we will provide guidelines and rubrics. We will need judges from all different disciplines at KU (sciences, humanities, social sciences, arts, etc.), and we do our best to assign students to judges in related disciplines.

If you're interested in volunteering as a judge for the Undergraduate Research Symposium, please contact curf@ku.edu.

Your application to give an ACE Talk is composed of two equally important pieces within the Symposium registration form:

1. Your abstract (250 words or less) and
2. A 3-minute video of yourself explaining your project.(YouTube link)

Both your abstract and your video should be crafted with a broad audience in mind. Avoid jargon and make sure to touch on what makes your research exciting.

ACE Talk winners will do a 15-minute presentation of their work at an in-person presentation event scheduled on Friday, April 25th, from 4:30-5:30 p.m., in Gray-Little Hall (room TBA). All ACE Talk presenters will receive a $500 scholarship.

Expectations & Information about the ACE Talk application:

• ACE Talk applicants MUST register for the Symposium/apply by 11:59pm on Sunday, April 6, 2025.
• The three ACE Talk awardees and all applicants will be notified by 5pm on Friday, April 11th.
• ACE Talk rehearsal will be held from 3-6pm on Thursday, April 17th (location TBD). Awardees will schedule a 30-minute slot during that time to rehearse their talk.
   

ACE Talk applications are evaluated based on:

1. Quality of project: the research itself is rigorous and of high quality. The project is far enough along to have initial results or conclusions.
2. Expertise: student understands their research and its significance to the larger academic conversation & communicates the complexities of their project to others.
3. Accessibility: avoids jargon and explains their research clearly to an intelligent but non-specialist audience.
4. Verbal communication skills
5. Engagement: makes the audience interested in the topic and want to know more.

Students applying in the arts should be sure to include both a brief example of their artwork (a composition, poem, painting, etc.) and a discussion of how it fits in with what other artists are doing.

Your abstract should provide a brief summary of your project.  In 250 words or less, we want to know what you did, why you did it, how you did it, and what you found/made/discovered. Please consult with your faculty mentor to be sure your project title and abstract are appropriate, as they cannot be changed. View tips from the Writing Center on writing abstracts.

Your video should give us a preview of how you will make your project accessible, creative, and engaging to a general audience. Be our guide in understanding your research.

Resources:

You may use any camera you have available, including a webcam. We are most concerned about the quality of your research project and the approach you take to explain your work, not your video camera quality.  

KU's Media Production Studio provides free access to computers with video editing software, web cameras, a sound recording booth, and staff that will help you with any of these tools.