For Faculty
We invite you to participate in the 2020 Brooklyn College Science Research Day by having your students present and by volunteering to serve as a judge. The event will be held on Friday, May 1, 2020, in the Student Center. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, April 17, 2020.
Having Your Students Present
We urge you to encourage your research students to get their projects ready to present at Science Day. This is an occasion for all students involved in research with faculty in the sciences and related fields to present their work. The posters are judged in divisions for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Posters will be displayed from 10 a.m. to noon, with an awards ceremony and lunch for participants afterward. The opportunity to present their research projects to others in this public setting is an important part of making this a meaningful experience for students.
You can download a what an online submission form (pdf) looks like to help you and your students prepare the application. The student will still need to submit the abstract online.
Judging
We encourage you to help with this effort to support student research by volunteering to serve as a judge. We need at least two judges for each poster. Generally, you will be e-mailed two to four abstracts prior to Research Day to familiarize you with your assigned posters. We generally assign posters to a judge whom we feel has the expertise to review a particular category of research. You will be required to assess the presenter's research using a rubric to measure several factors and assessing a score. Everything you will need will be given to you on the day of the event. An awards ceremony and lunch for participants and judges follows the poster session.
If you are willing to serve as a judge, please submit your information.
If you are unable to volunteer, we would still like your recommendations for other colleagues who could potentially serve as judges. You can recommend people at the link directly above.
Science Day is an important chance for students present their research and derive satisfaction from their academic accomplishments. Our goal is to interest them in continuing to engage in research activities. The attitudes and conduct of the judges are thus very important to the success of Science Day, and we thank you for serving in this role.
We could not do this without the cooperation of the judges. You are a very important part of making this a meaningful experience for the students who take part. On their behalf, thanks very much for your help!
Here are the ground rules:
- Judges should read through the abstracts before visiting the posters
- Each student will have the opportunity to present the work in the poster to two different judges who visit the poster at different times. Judges should work independently, not in pairs.
- Judges should introduce themselves upon approaching the students and attempt to establish a friendly rapport to make the presenter(s) comfortable.
- You have a sticker for each poster you are assigned to judge. Please affix your sticker on the bottom right corner of the poster after you’ve introduced yourself.
- The presenter(s) should first be asked to give a brief oral presentation about the project described on the poster, and then answer questions about his/her/their work on the specific problem. It is also proper to ask general questions about the general discipline or subject area in which the student worked, to assess the student’s level of understanding. Keep in mind that students are coming from very different levels of preparation, so the depth of the background will vary. If there are multiple presenters, encourage them to share in the questioning, if not in the actual presentation. You may also evaluate how well the different presenters appear to have worked collaboratively to do the project.
- As much as possible, judges should try to put the presenter(s) at ease, especially ones who appear nervous during questioning. Judges should take an active part in the evaluation; silence may be interpreted as disinterest or boredom which can discourage the presenter.
- Judges should feel free to question the presenter(s) on the background of the project, on the methods used, the results and interpretations, as well as asking who else assisted in the development of the project.
- Discussion and final scoring of the project should be done a considerable distance from the participant. Judges should determine their rankings individually and also consider the type of the research project (e.g. experiment, observational study; modeling; (re)analysis of an existing data set). Besides the score, comments are helpful to give the student and mentor feedback, should they ask for it, on how the presentation came across. Use only whole numbers when assigning scores, and provide a subtotal for each section.
- As soon as you have completed judging, write your comments, assign your ranking and return the judging sheet and the clipboard to the table where the rankings are being tallied. Please return each form before you begin judging your next poster.
Judging forms will be provided; here is an example of a judging form (pdf).
If you have further questions, contact us at 718.951.5000, ext. 1709 or via e-mail.
