Some of us groan when we realize our presentation date for our academic program’s research seminar has rolled around. We all wish we could postpone it until that one amazing experiment is completed, until we at least have some positive data, or just until the reviewers get back to us about our recently submitted manuscript. Please, please, please? In today’s research world, where everyone is a critic, don’t we all cringe at the idea of going up in front of people and presenting an incomplete project?
Unfortunately, no one will reschedule an international conference to give you time to wrap up your study before going up for your scheduled presentation. Furthermore, anyone who has ever attended a research conference will tell you just how many talks and posters tend not to deliver on what was promised in the abstracts presenters were forced to submit half a year in advance. The student research seminar is essentially a smaller, less stressful version of that experience. I spoke with Drs Nancy Walworth and Rick Padgett, who organize and run the Graduate Student Research Seminar (GSRS) for the Molecular Biosciences program at Rutgers. Here is what they had to say about the benefits of the GSRS:
“We hope that students will gain experience and confidence presenting their research to a broad, scientifically-savvy audience. While some students have frequent opportunities to present to groups on campus with related interests, not many have the opportunity to present to a broad audience. And many students do not have opportunities to present outside of their own lab group meetings. We hope that at least some students will have the chance to deliver oral presentations at local or national meetings. We expect that all students will need to communicate their research accomplishments during the course of pursuing their next career transition as well: whether it’s giving a talk to a prospective post-doctoral research group, a hiring manager at a biotech or pharma company, or any other employer, we want students to be confident that they have the skills to put together a great talk about their own research and to be capable of delivering it with confidence.
Preparing an annual (or close to it anyway!) presentation gives a student the chance to reflect on what they have accomplished over the past year, to remind themselves of the bigger picture to which their work contributes, and to consider their goals for the coming months. Sometimes students lose sight of what they have accomplished: they get caught up in the day-to-day experience of taking a few steps forward and a few steps back, and they don’t realize that over the course of a year, they have made significant progress!”
Some students use this particular seminar as their presentation for their annual thesis committee meeting. Others use it to supplement the seminar requirement of their programs. In the single year this seminar has been running, it has found a way to be useful to students of any year and any planned career path.
Drs Walworth and Padgett continued:
“In general students have been enthusiastic. Some who presented last year and are not on the schedule for this year were concerned that they were left out (they will be on the list next fall though!). Some senior students told us that this was their first opportunity to present outside of lab meeting. A number of students noted that by going to the seminar they discovered a student elsewhere in the building who had success with a technique they were trying to use. Attending the seminar gives students a chance to network with one another and with other labs on campus.
Students will learn from each other about presentation styles: What style of slide is appealing? How much background is enough? How much is too much? What makes for a good description of an experiment? What details do I wish the speaker had included? How can I get listeners excited about my project?
We think the quality of the presentations has been excellent, and other faculty members have conveyed that response as well. If you just do experiments at the bench, but don’t get a chance to tell others what you did, then what’s the point? Presenting results to a friendly, supportive audience is a great way to learn how to explain the significance of your research, and get some feedback as to whether you are doing so successfully.”
I realized, while thinking about this post, that all of our research proposals, manuscripts, even our own CVs, are just snapshots of one stage of a project. There is always somewhere else to go, and maybe you can’t see it at the moment, but that professor in the third row who studies a completely different model system or specializes in another technique, can. Presenting our current projects, while envisioning and discussing future aims with scientific peers can be educational, enlightening, and highly informative. After all, we will always need some manner of feedback in order to advance forward. Student research seminars are a wonderful way to start doing just that.
For those of you who want to attend the GSRS, it meets every Thursday at noon in Room V10 at RWJMS. Another relevant seminar, with a narrower focus on neuroscience, is NeuroConnections on Tuesdays at noon in V14.