Terraka Garner
Staff Writer
Faculty at Idaho State University’s Graduate School, alongside members of the Graduate Student Association, recently hosted a first year event called Graduate Student Research Days to provide a platform for this.
The event was held on March 14 and 16.
There were oral presentations as well as a poster symposium, to show attendees exactly what the students have been researching or working on.
“A lot of times people know we have graduate students but they don’t know what they are doing,” said the Associate Dean of the Graduate School Tracy Collum. “It’s a good opportunity for people to see what they are working on and what type of interests they have and what they are doing with their academic work to enhance those interests.”
Every graduate program at ISU was eligible to submit and present their research. Abstracts were submitted on a Google forum to the Graduate School and were then reviewed for approval or denial. The majority of the applicants were reportedly approved.
The event gave students a chance to meet with professionals and present their work to people that may know a lot about their topic as well as to people who know little to nothing about the topic.
“It gives students a great opportunity to have experience at presenting and also at designing posters for presentations if that’s the route they are choosing to do,” said Collum. “A lot of these students are going on to national conferences in their fields and to be able to have some experience at presenting their research and getting questions asked of them after they present their research just gives them more knowledge of what to expect at bigger conferences.”
There was a plethora of different people presenting, according to Collum.
Several others who were a first or second year student in the graduate program presented work that they have been doing either in a classroom or that they have been working on with a professor.
“It’s not necessarily a final project, so it’s a wide range and diverse group of presentations,” said Collum.
On March 14, after the presentation symposium, the Graduate Student Association hosted a networking luncheon for all graduate students, faculty, staff and presenters.
The presentations were separated into themes. Some of the various themes included pedagogy and writing in multiple modes, psychology and health and history and society.
Others included a natural sciences and environmental studies theme, along with analysis and pedagogy and online tools themes.
On March 16 at the poster symposium there were posters regarding the pedagogy, politics and praxis theme. Later in the day featured the research across the sciences theme. There was also a biological and environmental studies theme as well as a mental, physical, social and emotional health theme.
These presentations are at little to no cost for participating graduate students and are free to the public for viewing.
“This is a good way for [attendees] to see what the graduate students are doing and what ISU is contributing,” said Collum.
