Presenter Information

Impact Talks

Each participant will present for up to 3 minutes to groups of their peers with one-minute transitions. Presenters are allowed one slide, which will be submitted and approved beforehand. Impact Talk Sessions will be one hour, with 5-10 presenters in each session. Each session will conclude with Q&As and all presenters are required to stay until the end of their session. Presenters must review all of their peers in their session, in order to be considered for the finals and awards. 

Impact Area Categories:

Each presenter will select one of the impact areas that their work best represents.

• Agricultural Impact
• Creativity & Culture Impact
• Economy Impact
• Education Impact
• Energy & Environment Impact
• Healthcare Impact
• Safety Impact
• Social Constructs Impact
• Technology Impact
• Well-being Impact

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Presenter Expectations:

Before the Symposium

• Check your @ttu.edu email inbox AND junk mail folders for Symposium updates about abstract reviews and acceptance processes. 
• Work with your faculty mentor to develop an abstract for your URCA project.
• Submit your abstract before the deadline.
• Work with your faculty mentor to submit any abstract edits before the deadline.
• Work with your faculty mentor to create your impact slide.
• Submit your impact slide before the deadline.
• If you are assigned to presentation sessions that conflict with a scheduled course time, please notify your professor about the anticipated conflict and share the official university absence excuse letter provided by the Symposium team.

At the Symposium

• Arrive 15 minutes prior to your presentation session time.
• Attend the entire Preliminary Session!
• Serve as a peer reviewer in the Preliminary Session. This means that you should listen to and engage with the other presenters in your assigned session. To be eligible for Symposium Finals, you must submit a review for each of your assigned peer presenters.
• Attend the Symposium luncheon on Saturday for the Symposium Finals announcement. Finalist present again in an Impact Talk Finals Session that afternoon.
• Plan to present Saturday afternoon in the Symposium Finals.

Notes for Presenters from Group Projects/Labs

• Each Symposium presenter must give their own 3-min Impact Talk. There are no group presentations allowed.
• Each Symposium presenter must submit their own abstract and be approved/accepted to present individually.
• We welcome multiple presentations from the same URCA project, research group, or lab. As an individual competition, Symposium presenters should focus on succinctly presenting how they are making an impact through their individual contributions to the project.

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Slide Requirements:

If the slide does not meet these requirements, the presenter will not have a slide to present with. NO EXCEPTIONS!

Each presenter is required to submit one slide for display during their Impact Talk with the following requirements:

• Display the presenter's name.
• Display static information only (no transitions).
• No audio/video embedded on the slide: NO EXCEPTIONS.
• Prioritize readability and accessibility with no other design requirements.
• Format as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file (.pdf).
• Submit the slide to true@ttu.edu before the deadline.

All presenter slides will be combined into a PDF file for each session. If you do not submit the correct file type, you will not have a slide to present with. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Note: We recommend designing your slide uisng a 16:9 aspect ratio to make the best use of the projector screen without distorting your content.

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Abstract Guidelines

• Plain text only. The form does not except formatting or special characters (e.g. scientific symbols).
• Body of Abstract: 300 words or less (2000 characters or less).
• Body of Abstract entered separately from Author's information on the form.
• All communication regarding abstract submission will be from true@ttu.edu. 

Additional Considerations:

• Abstracts should state, in clear terms, the central research question or creative theme and the purpose of the project.
• Abstracts should provide a brief discussion of the project (e.g., research methodology).
• Abstracts should state conclusions, either final or anticipated.
• Abstracts should be well organized.
• The abstract appears in the Symposium's online abstract directory exactly as submitted, so proofreed carefully.

Abstracts should be reviewed by your faculty mentor at least 2X!

• Students should always have their faculty mentor review their abstract before they submit.
• Once abstract is submitted, TrUE will verify that the faculty mentor has reviewed/supported/edited the submitted abstract.
• Abstracts that DO NOT receive Faculty Mentor support will NOT be accepted.

PLEASE NOTE: ABSTRACTS ARE CONSIDERED FINAL UPON SUBMISSION. PROOFREAD YOUR ABSTRACT CAREFULLY.

Sample Abstract:

Abstract Title: Of Squirrels and Men: A Story of Platelet Storage

Name of Author(s): Bailee Sliker, Scott Cooper

Abstract: Platelets are routinely used in transfusions, yet they cannot be stored in a refrigerator or else they will be cleared rapidly when re-injected into a patient. The objective of this experiment is to see if platelets from ground squirrels are resistant to cold storage, and thus could serve as a model to develop methods to store human platelets in the cold. To test this we will fluorescently label platelets from humans and ground squirrels, store them at 4C and 37C for up to 48 hours, and measure their uptake by cultured human liver cells. Previous research has shown that human platelets stored at 4C are rapidly taken up and we predict that ground squirrel platelets stored at 4C will be resistant to this cold storage.

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Evaluation Criteria & Rubric:

Presenters must fully participate in both session formats meaning prelims and finals to be eligible for an award. If a presenter moves on to the Top 10 Finalists they will give their same Impact Talk to a panel of faculty and staff judges. The Top 3 Impact Talks will be students who are positively impacting the community, state, and world! 

Impact Talk Rubric

Helpful Web Resources

• Impact Talk Tips from Matt Saldaña and PaCE Program
• University of Queensland 3MT
• 2019 Monash 3MT Winner (Great example using humor)
• Academic Classroom Building Map and Parking (Parking Lot F3)

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