The Showcase Room is a forum for graduate and professional students to share their current, completed, quality research with other members of the MSU community.Conducting research is one of the most important elements of learning. After all, it is an indicator of the knowledge of graduate students and students, a manifestation of their skills and an opportunity to present themselves as a good literary analysis essay writer and scientist.

What are the goals of the Showcase Room?
MSU currently lacks an arena in which graduate and professional students from different disciplines can interact and share ideas and research interests with the broader MSU community. One of the barriers to this sharing of ideas is highly technical language that is understood mainly within interest groups.  In order to effectively communicate these ideas, graduate and professional students will be challenged to translate existing research into a short presentation or poster that is targeted at the general public.  Through translating what might be highly technical work into a more easily understood format, graduate and professional students will gain valuable professional development skills.

Who is eligible to present in the Showcase Room?
The Showcase Room is a forum for graduate and professional students to present work that has already been accepted at another local or national conference, or work that is already completed and has been endorsed as high quality by an MSU faculty member.  The Showcase Room is intended to be a means of communicating all the cutting edge, high quality work that MSU graduate and professional students complete. 

What format does my research need to be in to present in the Showcase Room?
The Showcase Room will be accepting posters and a limited number of oral presentations.  All applicants must submit a 200 word summary (abstract) for the program booklet. If the poster submission is accepted, the presenter must also prepare a short (4 minute) presentation that explains the research in language accessible by the general public. This talk will be given to the judges as they circulate the Showcase Room. An additional 2 minutes will be alloted for the judges to ask questions. Please note that these time limits are firm and are one of the criteria upon which speakers will be judged. If the oral presentation is accepted the presenter must prepare a 10-12 minute presentation. As with the poster presentation, this time limit is firm and is one of the criteria upon which presenters will be judged.

How will so many different projects be judged?
Since the projects will be so different in topic, the graduate students will be judged on their success in translating the research into language that can be understood by the general public.  The graduate students who receive the highest marks from the judges will be awarded monetary prizes at the Awards Reception. 

Who will judge?
Posters and short oral presentations will be judged by a small group of faculty, MSU community members, and other graduate students.  Each block (set of two sessions) will have its own group of judges who will tour the posters, listening to each presentation and marking down scores for each project.  The scores from all the judges in each block will be summed and awards will be determined based on these marks. The awards will be presented at the Awards Reception at 6:00 pm.

Where can I apply?
Click here to submit your application to the Showcase Room electronically.  The GAC is open for application submissions starting January 10th, 2010 and ending February 26th, 2010.