Undergraduate Research Day (URD) provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to present and discuss the outstanding research they have conducted at Florida State University. It is held each year toward the end of spring semester. This year, the event will be held in person on Friday, April 12th, 2024. It is scheduled to begin at 10:00am and end by 2:00pm. It will include a poster session and a series of talks, as well as an awards ceremony. The event will feature food and drink.

URD will start with a 1.5 hour long Poster Session. During the session, students will present a summary of their study via a large poster in the main atrium. Attendees will have the opportunity to walk around the room where each of the posters will be displayed, read about each of the studies, and have informal discussions with the presenters. This will be a great opportunity for students to present their Honors Thesis projects, highly involved DIS work, or outstanding course lab projects. Presenters need to email the abstract for their poster by Monday, April 1st at 5pm to: urd@psy.fsu.edu. As the email subject line, please put: POSTER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION. There will be a cash award ($100) given by Psi Chi for the best poster. Students must submit their poster files for printing by Thursday, April 4th at 5pm as poster templates will be provided for all students submitting abstracts.

The poster session will be followed by refreshments and the Howard Baker Research Talks & Awards Ceremony. This has been an important annual event in our department for many years. Students wishing to compete for the Howard Baker Awards must submit a 1000-word abstract (not their full paper) and present a brief talk about their research study (5-10 minutes, depending on how many presenters there are). The submissions will be judged by a panel of judges that will select the winners before the talks are given at URD, but presenting your talk is required to be eligible for an award: 1st place ($300), 2nd place ($200), and 3rd place ($100). To compete for a Howard Baker Award and present at URD, abstracts need to be submitted by Friday, April 5th at 5pm to: urd@psy.fsu.edu. Opportunities to conduct practice talks will be available April 8-11th.

Please note that students are encouraged to present the same study as both a poster and Howard Baker talk to provide professional experience with both presentation formats, but students winning Howard Baker Awards will not be eligible to also win the Best Poster award. Students are also strongly encouraged to present posters that they are presenting at FSU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Non-psychology majors whose research was conducted in a psychology lab are encouraged to present their research at URD for both the professional experience and recognition, although only psychology and/or behavioral neuroscience majors will be eligible for awards. Students from the Panama City Campus also are encouraged to present.