UMA Student Research Conference 2023

Call for Proposals

You can choose to submit a proposal in any of the formats listed below. Some of these formats involve only an individual submission. Some require collaboration and pre-planning. Students are encouraged to seek guidance from faculty members and/or staff to develop your title and abstract before submitting your proposal.

Conference Proposals are due by April 1! Late proposals cannot be considered.

Your proposal will need a title, a format, and an abstract/description. The title and description you provide are what will appear in the conference program. You will also be asked about your real-time availability on Friday, April 21st, when the synchronous (real-time) student presentations will take place. Asynchronous (pre-recorded) presentation proposals will be considered in extraordinary circumstances.

Visit the Submission tab to submit your proposal. (Registration is required).

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Lorien Lake-Corral or Dr. Robert Kellerman, and don't forget to ask your professors, Library or Writing Center staff, or Honors students for help!

What is an Academic Conference?

Academic conferences vary depending upon the discipline, the field, the location, the governing body, the particular professional organization, the topic, the focus, the purpose, and so on. Professionals in academia use conferences to present their own work for discussion and to attend in order to make connections with colleagues and to stay current on the work being done in their field. Conferences may involve a strict peer-review process or may be more open; they may also include opportunities for professional development.

Typically, information about the location, purpose, and topic of a conference and a call for proposals will be distributed, and academics prepare and submit a proposal by the deadline. Once informed of acceptance, the academic then prepares their presentation and presents it at their assigned time and location.

When presenting at a conference, an academic submits a proposal for a paper or another kind of format. This proposal will often include an abstract that provides a brief overview of what the presentation is about. It might include references, theories, methods, major questions, or other information that helps to show the project’s value to the field. A paper that is being presented would be similar in scope to an academic journal article and in many disciplines is treated as such.

For this UMA research conference, students will have the opportunity to participate through presentation and/or attendance. If you present your work, you will be participating in the activity and tradition of the academic conference so that you can gain experience and confidence. You are a scholar. What do you have to share with your community of scholars?

Presenting at a conference:

Depending upon the conference and discipline, there might be any number of formats for presentations. In all cases, “research” is a generic word for scholarly work that may be informative, critical, or creative. And if your work is in-progress, there’s room for you here too! Here are some typical formats:

Poster presentations: The academic prepares a poster that presents their research. Might include charts, graphs, graphics, short paragraphs, or even 3-D objects or other visuals. These posters may be displayed, but usually the academic who created the poster is standing by for discussion and to answer questions.

Paper presentations: Sometimes read, sometimes talked. Sometimes with a power point, sometimes with handouts, sometimes with no visuals. This is basically presenting a paper an academic has written for a class or toward publication.

Roundtables: Several people in a field will talk for a few minutes about the topic at hand and then will open up the floor for questions and for conversation with the attendees. This roundtable format is less formal than a paper (and is not typically about presenting research), and often has to do with discussion of a timely issue in the field (ie: worker's rights) or in the world (ie: policies and presidents).

Workshops: A workshop might use a similar format to a roundtable but is often more interactive and focused toward a particular purpose: like developing curriculum, organizing political actions, or writing memoirs.

Panels: Sometimes panels are pre-organized and sometimes they are created by conference organizers by grouping together related papers that have been submitted individually. A panel will typically have some kind of moderator (who might also be a discussant) who will introduce the panel members, keep time, field questions, and sometimes offer analysis that brings the individual papers together.

Creative performances: Some conferences include performances by spoken word artists, poets, dancers, jugglers, storytellers, visual artists, dance troupes, filmmakers.