L&S Symposium held in Science Building

University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point students had the chance to show off their collaborative efforts with faculty in the 13th annual College of Letters and Science Undergraduate Research Program on Thursday, April 27.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for students to showcase the research they’ve done with faculty members. The students have put in a significant amount of time with the faculty members on their own with colleagues of theirs, and they are usually quite excited about sharing their experience with others because there are very few venues for academics,” said Dona Warren, Professor of Philosophy.

This year is Warren’s second year heading up the organization of the symposium.

This year, the L&S Symposium had over 100 research presentations and posters representing 12 departments, including but not limited to Chemistry, Biology, Political Science, Physics, Mathematics and Psychology.

“The Symposium was one of the best ever, with super attendance by the public and students at the oral sessions. It was clearly a great year for student-faculty research,” said Dr. Christopher Cirmo, Dean of College of Letters and Science.

To present their research in the Symposium, students must first have a faculty mentor judge the quality of the work, and then the faculty members submit the projects to the planning committee. From there, the planning committee does final reviews of abstracts.

“This is I think one of the best years, in fact, depending on how you measure how many students are presenting this is the best year,” Warren said.

Continuing to speak on this year’s symposium she said, “We had a number of students cooperating on one presentation versus the number of distinct presentations, but it’s certainly one of the largest we’ve had and the quality of the posters and the presentations are just outstanding.”

Next year’s Symposium is already shaping up with research projects and ideas.

“Because this has such a nice inertia behind it, faculty is always very much aware of students who are working on projects that they may want to present next year,” Warren said.

Along with new research presentations next year, some from this year’s might go on to bigger venues.

“We have had good history with presentations here going on to be presented in Madison and even Washington, D.C.,” Warren said.