The 21st annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) will take place on Friday, April 5, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the MSU Union Ballroom with the first oral presentations beginning at 8:30 a.m. and the first poster presentations beginning at 9 a.m.
With approximately 800 projects, including group projects, more than 1,000 students from all degree-granting Michigan State University colleges are expected to participate in this year’s forum. Of those students, 36 are from the College of Arts & Letters and will be presenting in two categories:
- Humanities and Performing Arts
- Linguistics, Languages, and Speech
Held each spring and co-sponsored by the Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Honors College, UURAF provides MSU undergraduate students with an opportunity to showcase their scholarship and creative activity. The forum brings together an intellectual community of highly motivated students to share their work with faculty, peers, and external audiences while providing a unique educational opportunity for aspiring researchers.
Students will present research on a wide variety of topics, such as: improving care in the pediatric emergency department with virtual reality, examining sport-related concussions, napping to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation, examining reduced juvenile spotted hyena survival in Kenya, creative expressions of infertility, and more.
The forum provides MSU undergraduates with the opportunity to gain experience in presenting their research; answer questions about their work from peers, faculty, staff, and the public; and receive constructive feedback from judges.
Students choose how to present their work, either in the form of an oral presentation or a poster. Monetary prizes are awarded to recognize exemplary oral and poster presentations. One first-place award of $100 will be given in each section. First-place award recipients are eligible to submit their work for the two UURAF grand prizes of $500 each, which will be awarded to one presentation from the science and engineering categories and one presentation from the humanities, social sciences, and communication arts and sciences categories.
The award ceremony will be held on Wednesday, April 10, at 3:30 p.m. in the MSU Union Ballroom.
All UURAF events are free and open to the public.
For more information, including the full schedule of events and individual student presentation times, visit the UURAF website.
