Biology Seminar @ Harding University

Submit a Seminar Topic Proposal

(download a pdf of Timeline and Submission Deadlines)

Beginning Fall 2008, as a seminar presenter, you must submit a propsal to the faculty requesting approval of your choosen seminar topic no later than eight (8) weeks prior to your seminar presentation date. Detailed guidelines for the format and content of this proposal are available for download at Seminar Topic Proposal. The proposal will be evaluated by the faculty and returned to you in a timely manner. You should take heed of all comments returnred to you by the faclty regarding your topic.

Choosing a Seminar Topic

Choosing a seminar topic can be the biggest challenge to preparing your talk. Getting started may require some activation energy! Each student presenter is expected to pose a scientific question that relates to biological theory or to an application of theory and present data to either support or refute the question.

The most commonly made mistake when choosing a seminar topic is not focusing sufficiently. You should pose a specific research question and then design your seminar around answering that question, utilizing the primary literature and presenting data. Your seminar may be built on literature research, original research, or some combination of the two. Some students have reanalyzed the published data of others to provide a synthesis.

As you choose a topic, keep in mind that your seminar should demonstrate the process of science.

• Observe
• Pose a question or hypothesis regarding your observation
• Describe how the question was tested
• Present data which either support or refute the question
• Draw conclusions based on how the data relate to the question

• Topics may not be a duplication of a paper written for another biology class.
• Topics should reflect your career goals and personal interests in biology.
• Topics should be scientifically “interesting”, i.e. relevant to current biological theory.
• Do not confuse “scientific” interest with “medical”, “economic”, or any other interest.

It is easy to mistakenly prepare an “informative lecture” for a scientific seminar. An informative lecture is a talk about the facts of a particular subject (“All you wanted to know about ____ “). For example, it would be inappropriate to choose a topic describing a particular medical disorder and its clinical treatment. A related problem is that many articles published in health science journals are not science articles; case studies and meta-studies, for example. To avoid the pitfalls associated with clinical studies you should avoid such topics altogether. More information and suggestions can be found at Searching the Literature.