Menu

Student Research & Scholarship Day

Student Research and Scholarship Day
USCB & COVID-19
USCB & COVID-19
Learn More
Questions
Questions
We’re here to help. Click below to send us your questions.
contact us

Click here to launch the SRSD 2026 mobile-friendly web app to view the full event program

MONDAY

20 April 2026

USCB Bluffton Campus Library
FREE and Open to the Public!

Keynote Speaker:
Theodora Light, PhD
Adjunct Professor of History
University of South Carolina Beaufort

  • 2026 Schedule of Events
  • About SRSD
  • Frequently Asked Questions

All events will be held in the Library on the USCB Bluffton Campus.

Oral Presentations on Student Scholarship in the Humanities

10:00am-12:00noon, 243 Library

Interdisciplinary Research & Scholarship Poster Session

1:00pm-3:00pm, Library 1st Floor

Keynote Address and Awards Ceremony

3:30pm-5:00pm, 237 Library

What is Student Research & Scholarship Day (SRSD)?

Student Research & Scholarship Day (SRSD) is an annual event to showcase the research and scholarship activities of USCB students.

In preparation for SRSD, students join with faculty mentors to produce research and scholarship in the following categories:

Poster Presentations

  • Hypothesis-Driven — basic and applied research, testing a hypothesis using inferential statistics
  • Issue-Based — non-hypothesis based applied research, examining a socio-cultural, educational, political, health-related, economic, or technological issue.
  • Descriptive — non-hypothesis based research, guided by a question or set of questions
  • Visual Arts — Presentations of creative/artistic renderings
  • Innovation/Application — Non-hypothesis driven project to develop a novel technique, algorithm, or procedural method for pedagogy, information processing, engineering, problem solving, or domain-specific best practices
  • Inquiry — An inquiry-based project, exploring a question (which may be in the form of a thesis statement) about a topic, using research methodologies appropriate for its discipline (for example, educational, historical, rhetorical, political, socio-cultural, or literary critical analysis).

Oral Presentations

  • Student Scholarship in the Humanities - literary & cultural criticism, storytelling, readings of original student written works

There is also a secondary designation that can be applied to any presentation category, if applicable:
Social Justice – projects (submitted for consideration in any presentation category) that examine or address social justice–related issues are eligible for consideration for the annual USCB SRSD Social Justice Award.

Oral presentations must not exceed 20 minutes.

Posters must follow the specific formatting and size specifications (full-color 48” wide x 36” tall; see FAQ). For your convenience, Powerpoint-based poster templates are now available for each of the poster categories. These poster templates are pre-sized at 48”x36” and pre-formatted with placeholders for required content (USCB logo, project title, author list, abstract, etc.). You are welcome to make aesthetic changes to your poster as long as the required content is included. (To download: Right-click on the link, and then choose "Save Link As..." from the contextual menu that appears.)

Presenting at SRSD

A student may present either an individual or group project at SRSD and must have a mentor who is a full-time or adjunct faculty member at USCB. Your mentor must approve your abstract or artist statement in order for you to participate. Approval requirements are detailed on the registration form.

Participants must adhere to the following schedule and deadlines:

  • Monday, March 16 — Begin open registration period of intent to participate in SRSD, with the student’s name, the mentor’s name, project title, and poster category. Abstracts and posters are not due at this time, but if you have them ready at the time of your initial registration (and your abstract has been approved by your faculty mentor), you are welcome to submit your abstract, your poster, or both. (Please see the "Submission Requirements" section below for more information.)
  • Friday, April 10 at 11:59pm — Submission deadline for FINAL versions of project abstracts and/or artist statements. Remember that your mentor must approve your abstract (or artist statement) prior to submission.
  • Wednesday, April 15 at 11:59pm — Deadline for submission of students' posters. Posters should be submitted using the same form you used for registration. Because the SRSD committee will need time to have the posters printed, no updates or submissions will be permitted after this date. No exceptions!

Submission Requirements

Registering your intent to participate

SRSD uses an online application to manage registrations and abstracts/artist statements. Click on the appropriate large button at the top of this page to begin the process, which includes the following steps:

  • Register on the SRSD website. When accessing the registration form, you may be prompted enter your USCB credentials (same username and password as you use for Blackboard, Outlook email, etc.) access the registration form, which is hosted at https://forms.office.com/. Note that the same form will be used for registration, abstract submission, and poster submission. Consequently, when you submit your form, be sure to click on the button that reads "Save my response to edit" so that you can access and make changes to your form submission at https://forms.office.com/.
  • Submit your abstract (you can do this when you initially register, or you can save your form and edit your response to include your abstract at a later date). As noted above, your abstract will be submitted using the same form as that used for registration. If you don't have your abstract ready when you register, you can edit your original submission, provided that you have clicked the "Save my response to edit" button upon submitting your registration form the first time. Assuming you have done so, then you can retrieve and edit your original submission by going to https://forms.office.com/, and you can submit your abstract at that time. However, before you submit your abstract, please review the "Writing Abstracts" section at the bottom of the page.
  • After you initially register for SRSD, you’ll receive an e-mail as a receipt. Because you will be indicating your faculty mentor as part of your original submission, your mentor will also receive an e-mail. Please note that your faculty mentor must review and approve your abstract (or artist statement) prior to submission. More detailed information is available in the SRSD FAQ document and in the submission form itself.
  • If you need to edit your form after your initial submission but you neglected to click the "Save My Response To Edit" button upon your initial submission, then you will need to re-register and re-submit your form. Please do not email the SRSD committee with requests to access your form; we will not be able to "open your form up again" for you. As long as you click the "Save My Response To Edit" button at the point of your initial submission of the registration form, you will be able to retrieve your form and edit your submission at https://forms.office.com/.

Writing Abstracts

Your abstract (or, for those in the Visual Arts category your artist statement) must be 250 words or fewer.

If you have received financial support for your project, you should acknowledge that at the end of the abstract.

Resources for writing abstracts:

Mentoring Tips

We've compiled a list of potentially useful suggestions and guidelines for mentoring undergraduate researchers:

Presentation Etiquette

The people who come to visit your poster at SRSD come from a more general audience than you'd encounter at a highly specialized academic conference. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you should design and present your poster with a general public audience in mind.

We've also prepared a list of tips for conducting yourself professionally during the poster session:

For More Information

Before you contact us: Please make sure to review the Frequently Asked Questions—it's highly possible that your question may be answered there.

Otherwise, if the FAQ document or this website doesn't address your concerns, then please feel free to email the SRSD co-chairpersons:

Q: When can I start signing up, and where do I do it?

A: Registration begins on Monday, March 16th, 2026. You can submit your registration by clicking on the Student Registration Form link above.

Q: What do I do if I'm working on the same abstract with a group of students?

A: Only one student in the group should submit an abstract on behalf of the group. When that student submits the abstract, he/she/they should list all of their collaborators, including all students in the group, as well as the name of your faculty mentor and any co-mentors.

Q: Can one student submit multiple abstracts?

A: No — only one abstract or artist statement can be submitted per student. However, the same student can be listed as a co-author on more than one abstract. There are no exceptions to this policy, so please do not ask!

Q: How do I choose a faculty mentor?

A: The mentor might choose you, or you may reach out to a full-time or adjunct faculty member at USCB that works or teaches in your topic's area of interest. You might have started researching this topic as a class project, or you may already be participating in undergraduate or graduate research with this professor.

Q: What does a mentor do?

A: While that depends on the student and the topic, your mentor should serve as an editor and advisor to help you develop your project to its fullest potential. The mentor can help you focus the overall project into one of the specific categories of research and scholarship presented at SRSD. Your mentor will also be responsible for approving your abstract and guiding you through the process of designing your poster.

Q: What are the categories?

A: The categories occasionally change from year to year. This year's categories are:

  • Poster Presentations
    • Hypothesis-Driven — Basic and applied research, testing a hypothesis using inferential statistics
    • Issue-Based — Issue-based research is non-hypothesis based applied research, examining a socio-cultural, educational, political, health-related, economic, or technological issue
    • Descriptive — Descriptive research is non-hypothesis based research guided by a question or set of questions
    • Inquiry — An inquiry-based project, exploring a question (which may be in the form of a thesis statement) about a topic, using research methodologies appropriate for its discipline (for example, educational, historical, rhetorical, political, socio-cultural, or literary critical analysis).
    • Innovation/Application — Non-hypothesis driven project to develop a novel technique, algorithm, or procedural method for pedagogy, information processing, engineering, problem-solving, or domain-specific best practices
    • Visual Arts — Presentations of creative/artistic renderings
  • There is also a category for Oral Presentations of Student Scholarship in the Humanities.
  • There is also a secondary designation that can be applied to any presentation category, if applicable:
    Social Justice – projects (submitted for consideration in any presentation category) that examine or address social justice–related issues are eligible for consideration for the annual USCB SRSD Social Justice Award.

Q: What is the format of the presentations?

A: Other than the oral presentations, all presentations are currently poster-based. We encourage all students to create a sized poster at 4 feet (48 in.) wide by 3 feet (36 in.) tall. There are several poster templates (one for each poster category) on the website to help you with this. Click on the "About SRSD" tab above and scroll down to find the suggested PowerPoint poster templates that are pre-sized at 48”W by 36”H.

Q: How do I make a poster for SRSD?

A: Please start by using one of the templates available on the SRSD website (see the "About SRSD" section). These are PowerPoint files that have been formatted as one big "slide" sized at 4 feet (48 in.) wide x 3 feet (36 in.) tall. You can lay out electronic graphics (e.g., pictures, graphs, etc.) with appropriate text. In the event that your poster is eventually printed for a future conference, try to pick a font that is visible from 3 feet away from a poster; we recommend nothing smaller than a 24-point font. Once you have completed the design of your poster using PowerPoint (or other software as approved by your Faculty Mentor), please save it in PDF file format. Please submit only the PDF file — do not submit the original PowerPoint or other file that you used to prepare your poster PDF. Also, if your poster is not sized at 4 feet (48 in.) wide by 3 feet (36 in.) tall, it will not be accepted for presentation; please see the answer to the next question below for information on how to re-size your poster.

Q: Can I make changes to the poster template?

A: The poster templates provided on this website (in the "About SRSD" section) are pre-sized at 48”x36” and pre-formatted with placeholders for required content (USCB logo, project title, author list, abstract, etc.). You are welcome to make aesthetic changes to your poster as long as the required content is included.

Q: How do I resize my poster?

A: Assuming you are using PowerPoint (for Windows or MacOS), please follow these instructions to resize your poster.

Q: What all do I need to prepare for SRSD?

A: Poster and manuscript submission will be open at the same time as registration, and submissions will remain open until 11:59 pm on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. Note that abstracts and artist statements must be submitted by no later than 11:59pm on Friday, April 10th, 2026, and your abstract (or artist statement) must be approved by your faculty mentor prior to submission. Please make sure that you and your mentor carefully review the following submission requirements:

  • For posters: Prepare your poster in the usual format (48" wide by 36" tall) using a PowerPoint template as in past years (see the previous question). This will enable students to print out their full-size posters for future conferences if this is something that the students or their mentors have planned. Unless your mentor has suggested a different software application for poster preparation, your poster should be prepared in Microsoft PowerPoint (PPTX) format and then converted to a PDF file for submission. Posters must be sized at 48 in. wide by 36 in. tall; for your convenience, pre-sized and pre-formatted PowerPoint poster templates are available here on the SRSD site (see the "About SRSD" section).
  • For oral presentations:You should plan to submit their manuscript as a PDF file using the same upload mechanism used for poster submission.
  • Given the time and effort required by the SRSD committee to print the posters and prepare the SRSD mobile app for use on the day of the event, we kindly ask that you work closely with your Mentor to ensure that posters are submitted on time, they meet the given specifications, and that they are of sufficiently high quality.
  • Additional instructions and guidelines for mentors:
    • Mentors are required to approve your students' abstracts in order for their work to be included in SRSD.
    • For SRSD 2026, we do not have a separate login for mentors as we have had in past years, so we kindly ask that you please make sure that your student does not submit their abstract until it has been approved by you. This is the approval process we ask that you and your student follow:
      1. When it's ready, the student should send their abstract (or artist statement) to their faculty mentor via USCB email with a request to review and approve
      2. The mentor should send the student an email that explicitly indicates their approval of the abstract (or artist statement)
      3. The student print their mentor's approval email to a PDF (or take a screenshot) that clearly shows (at a minimum) the faculty mentor's name, the date and time the email was sent to the student, and the mentor's explicit approval of the abstract (or artist statement)
      4. The student will upload that PDF or screenshot using the same form as for registration and abstract submission (specifically, as their response to question #12 on the form)
    • When a student initially registers and lists you as their mentor, you will receive a copy of their registration confirmation email (provided that they have selected the correct email address for you from the dropdown list on the registration form). That email will contain a reminder for you, as the faculty mentor, to review the instructions for approving your student's abstract or artist statement.
    • As long as your student clicked the "Save My Response To Edit" button after their initial registration was submitted, they will be able to go to https://forms.office.com. There will be a link to a "Filled form" that they can use to update their form responses, including abstract submissions/revisions and poster uploads. If they did not click the "Save My Response To Edit" button, they will need to re-register and enter all their information again, from scratch.
    • Speaking of posters: we kindly ask that you do your best to have your students submit their posters and manuscripts only after you have approved them! (There is not yet a formal process in place for approving your students’ posters and manuscripts. It will be up to you as the faculty mentor to approve these prior to their submission.)

Q: What do I get for participating?

A: The best posters and oral presentations will be recognized during this year's SRSD awards ceremony. All students who presented their work will receive a certificate of participation. Remember that a conference presentation on your research will always add value to your resume when applying for a job. Take advantage of your accomplishments as a "junior researcher" and add them to your résumé!

Q: What criteria are used for determining the best posters and oral presentations?

A: On the day of SRSD, volunteer judges will be using the following approved rubrics for scoring posters and oral presentations: