Spring Symposium returns in person at EOU

Spring Symposium returns in person at EOU

May 13, 2022 LA GRANDE, Ore. – It’s the time of year for students to show off their hard work to the campus community. Symposium, Eastern Oregon University’s annual undergraduate academic presentation event, returns in person for 2022.

The symposium is scheduled from 8:15 a.m. to 2:50 p.m., May 18. The keynote begins at 9:00 a.m. in the McKenzie Theater, Loso Hall. Symposium is open to the public and will be hosted in various buildings across campus. Additional information for attendees and presenters and a full schedule can be found at https://www.eou.edu/symposium/

“Spring symposium is an annual undergraduate research symposium where students are able to present the results of their capstone research, or other junior or senior level research work that they might be doing, in a formal conference style setting,” said Associate Professor of Library Sarah Ralston 

Students from a variety of colleges and majors will be presenting. Presentation formats include research posters, panels, hybrid remote/in person talks, and performances and demonstrations. Hybrid talks are divided into 30-minute blocks while panels, the keynote and poster sessions will run in 50-minute blocks. The Art Senior Students Open Studios session will run for 90 minutes. 

“It’s an important springtime culminating event because it’s an opportunity for students to showcase research and work that they’ve been doing all year. For many of them, it’s work that they’ve been doing their whole entire academic career that has culminated into a big project,” Ralston Said.

The Keynote presentation this year will be delivered by Brady Layman and Lance Hatch and is titled “Designing a Biosensor for Bacterial Kidney Disease in Salmon.” The presentation will be the first biochemistry  keynote at a symposium in nearly a decade. 

“It’s going to be a 30-minute talk covering what type of biosensor it is as well as more along the story of how this project came to be and all the different parts of the project and why we care about bacterial kidney disease in salmon,” Layman said.

The 2022 symposium will be hosted entirely on campus with some remote access options after being hosted completely remotely for the 2021 event. In total, 55 student presenters have registered.  

“I always feel that there’s such great energy on campus on Symposium Day because everybody is moving around from building to building to look at the different poster sessions or go and hear different talks. It’s a proud moment for students who have been working really hard on some of this research,” Ralston said.

A faculty committee has run the symposium up until  2022. Due to concerns of limited resources and a growing desire among faculty to further expand the event, symposium will be managed directly by EOU administration moving forward.

“We’re teachers, we’re not event planners and it does take a lot of coordination to get things organized, especially for the in-person event. You have things like room scheduling, you have catering, you have to liaise with the administration, with the board of trustees, with the faculty with the students, you have to plan the whole schedule, the program. It’s a lot of work,” Ralston said. 

Overall, faculty and veteran presenters are encouraging first time student presenters to make the most of the event and look forward to being able to share their work and experiences with the public.

“Just try to have a good time. You’ve worked hard on the research and now you get to out show them what you’ve been working on,” Hatch said. 

Written by PR Intern Garrett Christensen.