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How to Begin Preparing Your Seminar
Preparing a seminar for BIOL 440 involves many steps carried out over several semesters of preparation. From Cell Biology through Journal Club and finally into your elective Biology courses, you have been exposed to a broad range of biological concepts. The facts and theories related in these courses were discovered, elucidated and formulated only after analysis of data collected during field and laboratory research. As a soon-to-graduate biologist it is time for you to move from a passive role as recipient of information to an active role as researcher and disseminator of scientific information.
The information related on this page is meant to serve as a mini-guide to the seminar-preparation process. This page is not an exhaustive list of all the information needed to prepare a seminar, nor it is meant to be the only page of this web site to which you go during your seminar preparation. You are expected to peruse the other pages in this site and work closely with your seminar advisor.
An Overview of the Seminar Preparation Timeline
One semester before your seminar presentation:
- Choose your advisor: Secure a biology faculty member to serve as your seminar advisor. Faculty areas of interest are shown at the bottom of this page. Keep in mind that each faculty will only take a few advisees per semester. Once a faculty member has agreed to be your advisor, you must notify the Seminar Coordinator. You do not officially have an advisor or Seminar date until it is posted on the BIOL 440 homepage.
- Secure your seminar topic: Working with your advisor, formulate a seminar topic of current scientific relevance which is addressed by primary literature.
You must be able to demonstrate the relevance of your topic/question to a basic scientific framework, theory, or model. Guidelines, suggestions, and direction are available at Choosing Your Topic. The task of choosing a seminar topic will require searching the current scientific literature. Help with this search is available at Searching the Literature.
- Submit your Seminar Topic Proposal: Work with your advisor to compose, revise and submit a formal Seminar Topic Proposal no later than the tenth week of the semester prior to your presentation date. Detailed guidelines for the format and content of this proposal are available for download at Topic Proposal Guidelines.
During the semester you are scheduled to present:
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You will meet regularly (perhaps weekly) with your seminar advisor to discuss your chosen primary literature, review the direction of your presentation and to ensure timely progress on your preparation.
- An important task in preparing your seminar is to secure the articles you will cite during your presentation.
- Once you have read and re-read your selected journal articles, you will be ready to begin creating your seminar presentation. Important information on format, content, pitfalls, slide structure and more is available at Putting It Together. Go over your slide format, order, content, etc. multiple times with your advisor.
- Work with your advisor to compose an Abstract, Literature Cited, and Seminar Presentation Summary. Guidelines regarding the content and format of your Presentation Summary are available at Presentation Summary Guidelines.
- A final checklist regarding the content and format of your seminar presentation is available at Presenter's Checklist . Make certain you go over this list and modify your presentation according to its warnings!
Monday prior to your presentation date:
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Submit a printed copy of your Abstract, Literature Cited, Presentation Summary, and Evaluation Form to each faculty member listed in the table below.
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