Undergraduate Symposium Judges

Issues or questions?  Email Sabine%20Heinhorst%20or call 601.266.4710 (prior to symposium) or 601.467.1666 (on day of symposium)

• On the day of the Symposium, please arrive at least 15 minutes before the beginning of your assigned panel or the poster session and sign in at the Judges and Moderators table, so we know you have arrived and won’t panic. You will receive a registration bag and nametag, and we will direct you to the location of your session.
• You will enter your scores online through Qualtrics. Please bring a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or similar device to access Qualtrics through the link that we will send to you as soon as it is live. There is a single evaluation rubric that accommodates both presentation types.
• Please submit your scores on the spot. It is essential that we receive all evaluations immediately, so that we can track and tally scores and prepare the list of winners in time for the awards ceremony later that day.
• If a presenter is absent, please let someone at the Judges and Moderators table know.
• Please note that prize categories do not correspond to panel titles or poster numbering; presenters in a panel may not be competing against each other. We assign categories prior to each UGS based on the projects that have been submitted, striving to give all presenters a similar chance of winning a prize. Chances of winning a prize usually range from 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 for each presenter. 

Oral Presentation Judges

• Before the session begins, please check that the moderator is present; if there is no moderator, please contact Sabine Heinhorst or someone at the Judges and Moderators table. If the moderator is present, please introduce yourself so that the moderator knows you have arrived.
• Even if this is not conventional in your discipline, each paper and student will be introduced by the moderator one at a time, with Q&A to follow each presentation. Since one of the criteria by which you will judge each presentation is the student’s ability to field questions, we need to be sure that each student has a chance to do so.
• Please have a question or two ready for each presenter. If a presentation begs many questions, please refrain from asking too many. Each presentation should be 12 minutes long, with 3 minutes of Q&A to follow. To maintain the UGS schedule throughout the day, each panel must begin and end on time.

Poster Judges

• Please encourage presenters to give you a brief synopsis of their project and its outcomes, then ask each presenter a few questions to follow up on points that are not clear, inappropriate conclusions, etc.
• Please time your interactions with the presenter of each poster assigned to you to ensure that all presenters have approximately the same time to explain their work and can be scored fairly.