Please read the following guidelines carefully before submitting a proposal.

Proposals

Proposals will take the form of an abstract. The submitted abstract should be limited to a single paragraph of about 150 words in length and should include a clear explanation of the project, presentation, or performance.

Where appropriate, the abstract should include a description of the methodology, an explanation of the steps by which you reached your conclusion, and in what form you will present your results (if appropriate). The selection committee realizes that many projects will not generate results until near the time of presentation.

The abstract should also contain a conclusion that indicates the general significance of the project.

Proposals should be crafted to reflect the organization of the Conference: presentations are limited to 12 minutes induration with an additional 3 minutes for questions. Presentations are grouped into thematic panels of four or five students.

The Whitman Undergraduate Conference presentations are intended to provide a learning experience for all members of the Whitman community, not just specialists in your field. The abstract and its title should be written in such a way as to pique the interest of, and be understood by, educated individuals outside your discipline.

If your project had a funding source from within Whitman (Rall, Perry, Abshire, etc.) or from without, you should acknowledge this assistance in the final line of the abstract, thus:  This project was funded by a Perry Research Fellowship from Whitman College.

All proposals made to the Undergraduate Conference involving human subjects must be approved by the College’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) before the final Feb. 9 deadline for revisions and resubmissions. By that date, all proposals involving human subjects must have entered their IRB approval number into the on-line submission form. If you have questions about IRB approval, please contact the IRB directly at IRB@whitman.edu.

Generally, the Committee will only accept one submission per student. Students interested in organizing or participating in a student-organized panel should refer to Guidelines for Student-Organized Panels.

The Deadlines for submissions is Friday, December 19.

Selection criteria

Each proposal will be reviewed by the faculty members on the Conference Organizing Committee. The Committee will either accept the proposal, accept it with minor revisions, or ask the student for a more substantial revision and a resubmission. The Committee may also reject proposals it deems inappropriate for the conference or those of insufficient quality or rigor.

The Committee’s decisions and comments concern the proposal abstract, not the substance of the proposed research project, poster, or performance. In the past, most of the Committee’s requests for revision have asked for clearer and/or more accessible descriptions of the project, definition of terms, explanations of the methodology (where applicable), the manner in which research results will be reported, and statements of the overall significance of the project.

Examples of abstracts can be found in the 2008 Undergraduate Conference program, which is available on the Undergraduate Conference Web page.

Please be sure to read the other documents on the Undergraduate Conference Web page concerning the conference time-line and the form and structure of the presentations. If you have any questions about submitting a proposal to the conference, or the conference itself, please contact Tom Callister, Associate Dean of the Faculty, at callista@whitman.edu.