Senior Seminar

Chemistry Senior Seminar Guidelines

1/14/09 DRAFT

Introduction

In order to demonstrate competency with oral scientific presentations, you are required to give a formal seminar of 30 minutes in length on your chosen chemical topic at the end of the semester. Every student in the class is required to attend every seminar. If the chemistry faculty decides the seminar is a poor presentation, the student will be required to repeat the talk at a later date.

Any deadline missed for the seminar portion of the course (see deadline table below) will cause an additional loss of points as determined by the seminar grading rubric.

The seminar is a departmental requirement, and you are encouraged to discuss your seminar with any faculty member of the department. Your seminar score is determined by your instructor as well as the chemistry program faculty.

*Task*	*Deadline*
Prepare a list of at least 5 possible seminar topics and a leading reference for each one. The seminar topics should clearly enable a discussion of at least 4 out of the following areas: organic chemistry, physical chemistry, analytical/instrumental chemistry, biochemistry, inorganic chemistry.	Friday of second week of classes
Submit the leading reference article for the seminar topic chosen (both as a paper copy and an electronic citation).	Friday of 3 rd week of classes
Schedule your seminar presentation.	Friday of 4 th week of classes
Submit a reflection that explains the challenges of the presentation and how you plan to address them.	Friday of 6 th week of classes
Submit an outline of the presentation in power-point format.	6 weeks before the presentation
Prepare a 1 st draft of a one-page abstract (concise and detailed) of your entire presentation along with a separate page listing all references to be used for the talk	3 weeks before the presentation
Video-tape a practice seminar presentation and provide an electronic copy of the slides	2 weeks before the presentation
Submit a reflection that explains the challenges of the presentation and how you addressed them.	2 weeks before the presentation
Prepare a good quality one-page abstract (concise and detailed) of your entire presentation along with a separate page listing all references to be used for the talk	1 week before the presentation
Submit electronically the final version of the power point slides of the public seminar.	The day after the presentation
Give a good quality public 30-minute seminar.	At scheduled presentation
Appropriately answer questions from peers and faculty concerning the seminar.	At scheduled presentation
Answer correctly questions about the seminar from faculty member(s) in a private question session.	At scheduled presentation
Submit a final reflection that highlights the improvements made between the practice presentation and actual presentation.	1 week after presentation

Important Definitions

Abstract:

The abstract consists of a short (one-page), word-processed summary of the work to be discussed in your talk, and must include the title of the talk and highlight the major points of the seminar. Be specific; abstracts of scientific talks are often published in collections, so detailed (but concise) scientific information is presented in abstracts.

Reference list:

The reference list should include all resources you have used or plan to use in preparing your talk.