The Honors College hosted a research conference at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 23 where students across all colleges and disciplines presented thesis posters to faculty and staff.
Associate Dean of the Honors College Jennie Popp said the Honors College partnered with the with honors directors from all six undergraduate colleges and schools at the U of A to organize this event. This is the second year of the event. The conference started with a welcome speech from Popp followed by breakout sessions and poster presentations.
Popp said when she started talking to students, it didn’t matter what college they were in, everybody seemed really afraid of the honors thesis.
“It was something scary and off putting,” she said, “and it’s the number one reason why students drop honors because they’re afraid to address that issue.”
Katie Wilson is the Associate Director of student success in the honors college. She said the honors thesis project is the capstone of the honors experience.
Students are paired with a faculty member to do a project of their choosing in a topic specific to their major, she said.
Michael Zachary, the Information Technology Specialist, said students present their projects in different mediums and one student created an art exhibit.
“We also have a clothing designer as well as more of the technical sustainability aspects of engineering and more of the sciences,” he said.
Wilson said the Honors College needs to make sure students have the resources to create a successful thesis project.
“We weren’t filling in those gaps and students come into college worried about it,” she said.
Popp said it would be a great idea to demystify the honors thesis process so everybody can understand it really isn’t that scary. That, and to have an opportunity for current students to showcase their work and show students that it is doable.
Another thing the Honors College does to help prepare students for the project is hosting workshops, Popp said. She said these workshops teach students how to put together an undergraduate research proposal.
The conference is a little under two and a half hours, according to the Honors College website.
“We have lots of ideas and I don’t like to promise too much to others but ideally it would be wonderful instead of having one or two hours on a particular afternoon,” Popp said, “we would like to expand our honors week and this is the first week we’re doing that to showcase each day a different college and let them show the best of the best of what they want to put out for the rest of campus to see.”
Wilson said they plan to change the format of the day next year.
“What we did last year, we started with the poster presentations and then went into the breakout sessions and tried to get everybody to go back into the poster presentations,” Wilson said, “and nobody went back in and there were a lot of faculty there to meet people.”
This year, the breakout sessions were the first thing of the day, Wilson said.
Overall, Wilson said this conference has been a big help to current students and graduates alike.