PRESENT YOUR RESEARCH VCU Poli Sci Student Conference

Students who present at the conference (or any research conference) should include this on their academic resumes. When graduate or professional schools consider applicants, they often look for this kind of credit on a CV. Having presented your research as an undergraduate powerfully indicates that you are already doing graduate level work and gives you a competitive advantage over other applicants.
 

Students get the opportunity to present their own ideas, arguments, and evidence to their peers and faculty. This gives a work in progress a preliminary test-run. Students receive comments, advice, and recommendations for further development in the process without having to receive a grade. Often these presentations help students to submit better papers, and occasionally these presentations help turn existing papers into theses or even articles for publication.
 
You are engaging your discipline or research agenda of choice at a high level. This is an intellectually fulfilling opportunity with no chance of risk. Our conference panel chairs are there to help foster discussion and enhance your presentation.

 Unlike some professional conferences, this event is not designed to competitively challenge your research findings as much as it is to help you further develop your research interests.

Your participation in this conference will likely place you in panels with students from any number of different universities and fields of study. In recent years, we have had participants from a number of international partner universities, dozens of universities from our region, and hundreds of VCU students, making our conference one that is local, state, regional, and international. In 2019, the conference featured students from 20 regional universities and 2 countries. This is a great opportunity for students to engage their ideas with those from all over the field.

The conference is targeted at undergraduate students although we will consider graduate level papers as they fit the panels. We DO NOT REQUIRE completed paper. We will consider works in progress, new ideas you want to develop, old papers you want to present, and most other research possibilities as long as they fit into the following criteria:
 
Papers or ideas should fit into the very broad categories of: Government, Public Policy, and International Affairs. Papers can range from the formal and theoretical to pragmatic policy and issue analysis.

Strong consideration will be given to papers that deal with issues of:
American politics and policy, public administration, sociology and social structures ,international relations and world affairs, human rights, civil rights, criminal justice and public safety, national security, human security, geography and demography health policy, environmental policy, economic policy and political economy, race, class, and gender politics, social justice