Arts and Sciences Symposium

Since 1995, every year an Arts and Science symposium takes place. In the last 6 years Dr. Jan Case has been the chairman for the event at JSU. Through the years there have been different formats and different ones in charge of the event.

It is about students ranging from graduates to undergraduates that do research projects either extracurricular projects working along with their professors or as part of a class they attend. This gives the students a forum to come and present the work they did and discuss it within a ten minute session. Some of the students will present this to committees later on and this gives them a chance to get a trial run.

Subjects include English, Art, Math, Computer Science, and recently the College of Education has a couple of entries this year. A lot of new entries from here and there are submitted.

Dr. Case explains, “It’s a great variety and that’s the good thing about it. It gives us a chance to see what is going on in the rest of the campus… I really like knowing different things that are going on….I have learned a lot about grants and projects they have for freshman biology students.”

Any department that has at least three entries is provided a prize. It is a very “low-key”, but friendly competition.

All the abstracts that are presented from their research are published in a proceedings book so the students will have a collection. It’s a great experience and looks great on a resume if the students apply for a job or enter into graduate school.

Dr. Case says, “It really makes them stand out because we are small enough to foster undergraduate research and our undergraduates can present a lot of things that other universities reserve for their graduates”.

The application process opens up at the end of the fall semester. Most of the students that did their research in the fall and present their abstracts have a little time to revise before presenting.

Projects that are done in the spring are not finished yet and this is why it is held in the fall now. Before the symposium was held later in the spring but it was hard because of all the end of the year things going on. It has worked out well, after many experimental dates, so it is kept this way.

Along with presentations, a graphic art contest is taking place. The winners for this year’s symposium are Nicolette McClure, Lindsey Brooks, and Lindsey Price. The art design was used for the itinerary and will be used for the rest of the year. This was their first year entering the graphic art contest and won!