Last week, I had the opportunity to judge the University of Montana’s Undergraduate Research Conference (UMCUR).
I was assigned to judge a section of social science oral presentations. The topics in my session were about LGBTQ self-esteem, drunk driving in Montana and current research on depression.
Each student was presenting on their research they had been working on through their undergraduate career. In most cases, this presentation was based on their senior project/capstone project through the honors college. Some students had their own original research and some were working with data from the labs of other social scientists or their research mentor.
Through the training, I learned that I was to judge the presentations based on the how clear the information was presented and the merit of the research. As part of the conference, 5 oral presentation students would win an outstanding achievement award.
They were experimenting with online (GoogleDocs) judging forms, so I scanned the QR code and filled out the forms on my iPad.
Overall, I was very impressed! I have only presented orally at a research conference as a graduate student, and I found it difficult to prepare for because I had only presented posters up to that point!
I am glad I had the chance to do this through the University – UM gives graduate students a lot of opportunities to be involved.
Abbey Dufoe 