1. Complete your project:
   
   • If you are enrolled in the Discovery Project, you must complete the requirements set down by Dr. Cordes.
     
   • If you are preforming a service or internship project, you must complete the appropriate number of on-site hours for the credit hours for which you have enrolled: 25 hours for 1 hour, 50 hours for 2 hours, and 75 hours for 3 hours. Naturally, you must also complete the duties to which you agreed when setting up the project. Download the project completion verification form.

2. Present your project to the public:
   Poster presentations of Service Learning and Internship Project results will be given in the College Park Scholars Academic Showcase on Thursday and Friday, May 1 and 2. If your service project or internship involves academic or scientific research, you may, instead, opt to present at the University Undergraduate Research Day, April 23. (Contact us by 2/28 if you wish to do this and visit the Undergraduate Research Day web site.) In either event, your presentation will be in a public forum that will be attended by current and future instructors, advisors, and, possibly, employers. Your presentation is an excellent opportunity to bring yourself to their (positive) attention.

3. Submit digital files of your posters to the instructors:
   You will probably choose to keep the actual posters. If you want to unload them, however, we would also like to have them.

Schedule: Plan to assemble for these additional meetings during the semester.

• 2/04: CCC1100, 6:00 - 7:00 PM. General orientation.

• 3/13: CCC1100, 6:00 - 7:00 PM. Project status assessment.

• 4/3: CCC1100, 6:00 - 7:00 PM. Poster techniques and trouble-shooting.

• 4/23: Undergraduate Research Day

• 5/1-2: College Park Scholars Academic Showcase

• 5/13: CCC1100, 6:00 - 9:00. Post-Poster Presentation Party and ELT wrapup.

One big benefit we hope to derive from this exercise is that we will all look good. In order to facilitate this we are suggesting the following presentation guidelines. There are certain things we absolutely require, however depending on the nature of your project, you may want to modify other aspects slightly. Feel free to do so. We present them as defaults:

Construction: You presentation will be mounted on a 40" x 32" rectangle of foam-core backing. Have your entire poster printed on a plotter. (This will cost roughly $32.00. That's a lot cheaper than a traditional cut and paste board of similar quality.)

• Advantage: Looks really slick. Enables you to use the full capabilities of computer graphics design features, including background images.

• Disadvantage: Must be printed at OIT Visualization and Presentation Lab (VPL) in CSS building. Requires that final image file be assembled in Adobe Illustrator. Probably, you will need access to the ELT G4 in Centreville 1208 or a machine of similar power to do this conveniently. You should plan to get your files to the VPL at least one full week prior to show time.

• You poster's overall dimensions should be 36"x30." There should be a one inch margin all around. This gives you 34"x28" of useful space. Usually, these are in landscape format, but portrait is OK if you prefer.

• All materials on poster must come from either a printer, a photographic lab, or the hand of a professional-quality illustrator. Hand-Lettering of poster is prohibited.

• The University of Maryland logo and the CPS sunspot logo must appear in the upper left and right hand corners respectively.

• All posters are to have a heading indicating:
  
  • Project Title
    
  • Author(s) full name
    
  • Authors' affiliation (i.e. CPS program and major) and contact information.

  E.G.
  
  Applying Suntan Lotion to
  the Backsides of Wealthy Retirees at
  the Sunny Side Up Naturist Resort

  Mohn W. Jerck, Jr.
  College Park Scholars - Earth, Life, and Time Program
  University of Maryland, College Park
  mjerck@blam.umd.edu

• Bibliography: Provide references for your text as if it were an academic paper. Depending on your project and write up, this may not be necessary. For ELT's official scientific bibliographic format, see http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite/reading/bibstyle.html

• All text should be in a common true-type font such as Times Roman Bold , Palatino Bold, Arial, etc. If you MUST use an unusual font, be sure to provide a copy of it to the Visualization Lab.

• Poster must be readily legible from three feet away. To this end, use large type (36 pts or more) for headings and 24 pt for body text.

1. If your project is non-research oriented:
   • Service Site; Present the service site, its mission, and contact information for it.

   • Issue Confronting Site: Introduce the issue confronting your service site that your project was meant to address.

   • Activities: Tell what you did to address the issue confronting the site.

   • Impact: Describe the impact that your project had on the site, particularly with regard to the major issue you were attempting to address. Also, describe the project's impact on you (i.e. your knowledge base, attitudes, and outlook.).

   • Future work: Describe possible future issues that your project enables your service site to address.

   • Acknowledgments. Acknowledge everyone who gave you support or help. Be sure to acknowledge Lacretia Johnson, College Park Scholars, and Earth, Life and Time.

2. If your project is research oriented:
   • Abstract; A telegraphic summary of your work not to exceed 300 words. Readers will use this to decide whether they are interested in studying the rest of your poster.

   • Introduction: Introduce the issues and problems you are studying

   • Materials: Describe the materials you used, be they bibliographic sources, archival material, or physical specimens.

   • Methods: Explicitly describe your methods of analysis so that a reader would be able (with some research) to replicate your work.

   • Results: State the results of your research clearly and succinctly

   • Discussion: Interpret your results. This section should highlight your major conclusions and possible future lines of inquiry.

   • Acknowledgments. Acknowledge everyone who gave you support or help. Be sure to acknowledge your sponsor, Lacretia Johnson or John Cordes, College Park Scholars, and Earth, Life and Time.

• Include photographs, illustrations, charts, or graphs if they are useful, but do not allow them to distract from your message. Be sure to include photographs of yourself working on the project.

• Where possible, use bulletized summaries of information in your text, rather than full paragraphs. You don't have much room!

• Assemble elements in a logical visual sequence so that the viewer's eye is drawn around the poster in the right order.

• Design your poster in such a way that it will be logical and intelligible even if you are not there to explain it.

• In academic writing, one generally suppresses one's personal views for the sake of objectivity. In a case like this, however, infusing your text with your personal subjective reactions to your project will make it more engaging and interesting, so don't hold back.

• One neat trick for focusing attention on a key idea is to highlight an insightful quote by placing it in large print in some central location. (You've probably seen news magazines do this.) As you perform your project, be alert for clever quotes that seem to sum up some important aspect.

• But the real key is this: This is you opportunity to promote yourself. People will want to know what you did. Many CPS student presentations fail to grasp this important fact. Punch up your role and your contribution as much as you can without lying or slamming anyone else. In this setting modesty is a vice!