Content

25-word Proposal Description:

The Proposal Description should be a concise single sentence (or sentence fragment) articulating the thesis, hypothesis, or purpose of their presentation, poster, or performance. Because this description will appear in the conference program, this sentence should—in conjunction with the title—aim both to intrigue and to inform conference attendees so that they will desire to come hear the student's presentation or to view their poster  Encourage your students to use active, vivid language, and be clear. If they have already finished their research or project and therefore know their conclusion, they should attempt to assert a definite claim rather than simply alluding to the fact that they will do so once their research or project is completed. In the examples below, the “less effective” description offers very little to interest the reader since the actual content of the writer’s “learning” is not specified. The “more effective” example, by contrast, attracts the reader with concrete assertions based upon the outcome of the writer’s research.

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Less effective: Behind the Scenes at the Zoo: In this presentation, I will talk about what I learned about animal behavior from a recent trip to the Los Angeles Zoo.

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More effective: Behind the Scenes at the Zoo: While captivity can impede animals’ natural behaviors and create behavioral disorders, properly structured zoo environments can effectively stimulate species-appropriate behavior and mitigate animals’ stress.

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250- and 400-word Abstracts:

The Proposal Abstract, as well as the Awards and Publication abstracts, should begin with a sentence designed to intrigue their readers and to introduce their topic.(This opening sentence may be, but is not required to be, the same sentence used in your 25-word Proposal Description.) They should clearly articulate the student's thesis, hypothesis, or purpose towards the beginning of the abstract and should continue with a fuller account of your proposal. Students may want to include some or all of the following in the abstract:

• a fuller explanation of your thesis or purpose

• necessary background or context for your project

• an explanation of your research methodology and type(s) of supporting evidence

• a few specific instances of key evidence—examples, statistics, facts, quotations—with accompanying in-text citations

• an explanation of the significance or application of your work

• a relevant and catchy epigraph

• an emphatic or thoughtful concluding sentence

As with their Proposal Description, students should strive to make the language of your abstracts assertive and content-rich. They do not want to wait until the actual presentation to tell us their central ideas; encourage them to use the abstract to outline those key ideas.

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Considering Audience

Although expectations for academic language and form differ among disciplines, the abstracts that students write for this conference should reflect the conference’s attendees and goals and should consequently be written to appeal to a broad audience with diverse academic interests and areas of expertise. Their language should be professional and should demonstrate mastery of the concepts and vocabulary appropriate to the discipline(s) of inquiry. At the same time, students should also try to make the language accessible and to make clear why their ideas should be of interest to just such a multi-talented and multi-disciplinary audience.

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Documentation

Students must include with all of submitted abstracts a Works Cited or References list of their top five sources written in accordance with MLA style and identifying the major sources cited or consulted in their research. This list will not count towards the word total for their abstracts. Student abstracts themselves should include brief MLA-style in-text citations where relevant in order a) to indicate any words, ideas, or other evidence included in their abstract that are taken from their research sources or b) to point their readers to sources where such evidence can be found. For more information on MLA documentation style, students should consult the following sources:

• The MLA Guidebook for Writers of Research Papers, 8th ed.(2016)

• Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference. Use the pull-down menu under “Humanities” and choose “Documenting Sources”

• The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University

• Any up-to-date college writing handbook featuring a current (2016) section on MLA style

 

Evaluation Criteria

Abstracts will be judged on the following criteria, using this rubric:

• quality of critical thinking

• originality and relevance of topic, argument, and/or approach

• clarity, logical organization, and cogency of argument

• quality, relevance, and specificity of research

• quality and appropriateness of style

• grammatical correctness

• correctness of MLA documentation