Students Share Research in Inaugural GSA Symposium

By Spencer Watson

Graduate students gathered in the Helen Guinn Adams Atrium for breakfast and poster presentations during the morning session of the inaugural Graduate Student Association symposium.

The event was held both in the Helen Guinn Adams Atrium and the Rayford Auditorium of the Biomedical Research buildings.

“We saw an opportunity to create an event that incorporated poster presentations and oral presentations together in one day, like what you’d see at a scientific conference” said Lee Ann Jolly, a Ph.D. student studying thyroid cancer and GSA president.

“We extended an invitation to all students to participate, including junior trainees who may not have had the opportunity to travel to one of these conferences yet.  Presenting at a national conference can be a bit overwhelming your first time, therefore we wanted to provide an opportunity for our students to learn how to network outside of their area of research, develop oral presentation skills, and go through the process of generating a poster. All of these skills are important for students to have when they travel to national conferences and represent UAMS, and these skills also help prepare students professionally as they move up in their careers.”

Jolly said that as a student it was tremendously beneficial to see the diversity of research projects being conducted by UAMS graduate students.

Ahmad Alanazi, a Ph.D. student in communications science and disorders, explains his poster presentation during the morning session.

“As students go through the Ph.D. process, we often become immersed in very specific and focused areas of research. Sometimes, it is easy to forget how beneficial it can be to have a scientist outside of our field look at our projects and bring a different perspective. By presenting your research to scientists from multiple fields, you open the door to receiving critiques that can make you think about your project differently and steer you in directions you didn’t consider before. My own project has become stronger from receiving ideas from scientists outside the field of thyroid cancer, so I definitely encourage students to share their research with scientists outside their fields who can look at it from a completely different perspective.”

She said providing more opportunities like this fosters the development of new ideas and ways of thinking about research projects because students and faculty from multiple departments are being brought together and communicating with each other face to face.

Aside from being student organized and garnering participation from a broad range of UAMS departments, Jolly said she was thrilled that faculty offered their time to help run the event. Seven faculty members agreed to judge the 30 abstracts. Three more agreed to be judges for the poster presentations and four judged oral presentations, which were given by the 10 students who submitted the highest-rated abstracts.

Organizers said the symposium gave students the invaluable opportunity to answer questions and get feedback from other students in other programs, as well as have their work judged by faculty.

“The amount of faculty support that we received has been overwhelming and wonderful. They made it easy for us to accomplish this and set it up,” Jolly said.

Though the GSA has sponsored social events before, Jolly said this was the first academic-oriented function the group has organized, and the level of administrative support and student participation makes them optimistic about growing the event for next year.

“We received 30 abstracts, which is great. But that represents only a small amount of research being conducted by UAMS graduate students. Now that we’ve introduced the event, students understand what to expect for next year and we hope more students will get involved.”