Dept of Chemistry and Physics
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Professional scientists at all levels are frequently called upon to give oral presentations to their peers, managers, subordinates, and the general public. Although the topics of these presentations might vary with audience, the expectation is that the professional can speak clearly about his or her area of expertise. The Senior Seminar is designed to provide students with the opportunity to develop necessary presentation skills and to grow in their abilities to present clearly and well. Senior Seminar is divided into Fall and Spring sessions.
The goal of the fall-semester seminar is two-fold:
- to give the student the background information and tools needed to construct an appropriate presentation; and,
- to provide an opportunity for a student to deliver various kinds of presentations and gain experience by practice.
The goal of the spring-semester seminar is to provide the opportunity for the student to demonstrate all the tenets of good presentation by delivering her own formal presentation to her chemistry student peers in a format that is similar to a professional meeting of chemists. The faculty will evaluate the talk as part of the department’s senior comprehensive requirement for graduation.
To fulfill the entire graduation requirement the student must:
- Select a Chem-W advisor during the first semester who will also act as advisor for preparing the seminar.
- Attend seminar sessions, fall and spring, including the presentations given by other students.
- Provide an abstract of your talk one week before the presentation.
- Give a 30 minute presentation based on your research or the research of others. (See below)
- Give an edited 10-minute presentation at the annual ACS-sponsored Student Paper Day.
Topic
Your formal presentation must be based on either:
- the research you have done or,
- the work of others as found in the primary and secondary chemistry literature.
Plan to discuss the content of your talk with your Chemistry Department advisor to clarify questions you might have.
The audience for your formal comprehensive presentation is other chemistry students. The chemistry content should be at a level understandable by a second semester junior who has completed one semester of physical chemistry. However, you must include enough chemistry to demonstrate to the faculty that you understand the science in your talk. Plan to spend at least 2/3 of the time on the technical content of your presentation.
Use the visual aids that best support your presentation. There is a range of technologies available, from overhead projectors to computer programs. You are not required to use any particular form of visual aid. However, whatever you decide to use should be readable in the last row of seats in room 105, the Science Lecture Hall. Keep your visual aids simple, using pictures, diagrams, equations, etc. to highlight the ideas you are presenting orally. Include appropriate titles and labels on the images such that each is understandable on its own. Use your visual aids as an outline to prompt you through your presentation so that you can speak comfortably about the work without memorizing the text or reading directly from the images. Include as many images as are needed to clearly present your topic. Be sure to consult your advisor so that you have about the right number of visual aids.
Be prepared to answer questions when you have completed your presentation. Note that questions usually do not suggest something was deficient in the presentation. Indeed, most questions to the speaker suggest that the listener actually heard, and is interested in, what was said. Expect questions from peers and from faculty as a sign of respect for the quality of the work. As a seminar participant, you should be prepared to ask questions after the presentations by others.
After your talk, the seminar chair will poll the faculty to determine its evaluation of your presentation; you may also meet with the seminar chair to discuss the faculty’s comments. This will take place within a few days following your presentation.
If the faculty should decide that some portion of your seminar is unsatisfactory, the seminar chair will outline what you must do to correct the deficiency. Ordinarily, you will be asked to present to the faculty only that portion of your presentation that was unsatisfactory. Reasons for repeating parts of the talk have included failure to provide sufficient description of the work done, not enough chemistry content, or failure to demonstrate good understanding of the basic principles of an area of chemistry presented.
To present at Student Paper Day, edit your talk to about 10-12 minutes in length, as outlined by the symposium organizer. Since the audience for this presentation is assumed to be knowledgeable chemists, you should reduce the amount of background material, and focus the presentation on the results and conclusions. There is no grade assigned to this presentation, but it is required for graduation, and the best talk receives a monetary award!
When all the presentations of all students have been heard, the faculty, through a process of consensus, will assign a grade to each student’s 30-minute presentation.
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