9th Annual Environmental Chemistry Student Symposium
March 17-18, 2006
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9th Annual Environmental Chemistry Student Symposium
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Oral Presentations
Please bring your talk in electronic format (PowerPoint or Adobe) to the Friday night Keynote Address. CD's or USB Flash Drives are acceptable. We will load your talks following Dr. Likens' address. If you cannot attend the Friday Keynote, please email your talk slides to Geoff Bowers by Friday. Talks/Sessions Schedule can be found here. If you are a presenter, please be aware of the scheduled time for your presentation. Guidelines: Three types of visual equipment will be available for oral presenters: 1. Slide projector 2. Overhead projector 3. Computer (PC) with video projector for PowerPoint presentations. See above note if you choose this method. Also, consider bringing an alternative visual presentation in case the computer equipment fails. Time: 12 minutes of presentation plus 3 minutes for discussion. Make sure you keep the time limit!! We will have session chairs that will indicate to you when you have reached the 10 minute mark. To maintain our schedule they will cut you off after 12 minutes no matter whether your presentation is finished or not. Practice and time yourself before giving your presentation. Audience: Presentations should be prepared to reach an interdisciplinary scientific audience. You may assume the audience has basic scientific knowledge, but do not assume the audience is intimately familiar with your specific field or jargon commonly used in your field. Therefore, you should either avoid that jargon or define and explain acronyms, terms, and concepts. Judging: Judges will be using judging sheets to evaluate your presentation. Please familiarize yourself with this sheet and design your presentation accordingly. Oral Presentation Hints Although there are many factors which go into an excellent presentation, we would like to emphasize a few points: 1) Use font size that will be large enough to be seen clearly from the back of a room when projected (at least 18 point font, though 24 point and higher work best). Do not try to put too much on a single slide or overhead. 2) Present enough background and introductory material for an audience unfamiliar with your particular field of study to understand the larger significance of your work. 3) Speak slowly and clearly. Don't worry about presenting ALL your results. 4) Avoid tables - put your info into a graph, diagram, or sentence. Also, simplify graphs - the audience needs to be able to get the general idea quickly. When showing a graph, the very FIRST thing you should do is TELL the audience what the axes are. This helps them understand your graph quickly. 5) Make sure that your background color, texture, or picture does not interfere with the readability of your text. It doesn't matter how pretty your slide is if the audience can't read it! 6) Define terms and abbreviations!!!! This is an interdisciplinary audience. Do not expect everyone to know what you are talking about. For example, do you know what all these mean?: AFM, TEM, XPS, ICP-AES, XRD, XAFS, tRNA, GC-MS, NMR, AMD, K-spar, SMOW, PDB, BIR, BTEX compounds, MOPS, PCR, LPS, TCA-cycle, smectite, a, magnetosome, siderophore, saprolite... 7) Practice, practice, practice so that you know you will be within the time limit and you can relax knowing how you will express your thoughts. Practice in front of others - at your research group meeting, for example. They can tell you what parts are confusing. |
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