House Life

House Life

Quaker Days Research Conference

Quaker Days Research Conference

Showcasing the breadth of undergraduate research at Penn, current students from each of the four Schools will present 5-minute papers and 60-second lectures on a wide array of subjects.

  • 5-minute papers: In this format, you should aim to present a coherent introduction to your topic, enlarge upon perhaps two significant argumentative points, then offer a cogent and elegant conclusion. It's perfectly reasonable to allude to a bigger project of which this presentation forms a part. But the presentation must be complete and whole in its own right. Bear in mind that you are communicating to a non-specialist audience, so complicated terminology or concepts will need to be explained. Those explanations will be part of your 5 minutes. We are budgeting a further 5 minutes for questions and discussions, so as long as presenters keep to the time limitations, there will be plenty of time to enlarge upon observations or arguments you have advanced in your presentation.
     
  • 60-second lectures: This is an exciting but challenging format, in which it is functionally impossible to do more than introduce an audience to a single idea, theme, or proposition. You must therefore aim for succinctness and elegance in your presentation. Your topic will inevitably be part of a much larger project, so it's essential that you both offer a coherent account of the topic you have chosen to speak on and offer indications, hints, or clues of the bigger picture that it forms a part of. Your objective is to provide enough information to your audience to facilitate a question-and-answer session--which will follow each presentation, provided presenters keep to the time limitations.