The WE Local Collegiate Competition is a great way to share your research with a broad technical audience who can offer support, insight, and constructive feedback. Finalists will be selected from the submitted abstracts for the collegiate competition and are required to compete onsite at a WE Local conference in all categories: poster, lightning talk, and face-to-face judging! Graduate students are highly encouraged to submit abstracts summarizing their graduate research, co-ops/internships or external research experience to the Graduate Collegiate Competition. This allows for students to learn and gain insight on their research, and to receive live responses and encouragement from the judges. The judges will consist of professional members from academia, industry, and government within the STEM field.
As a Finalists of the WE Local Collegiate Competition, you will receive a $250 travel stipend and complimentary collegiate premier registration to compete in the competition at a WE Local conference in North America. You will also be recognized during the WE Achieve awards ceremony where three finalists from each category will be awarded first, second, and third place.
See what the former WE Local Finalists had to say about Collegiate Competition! WE Local Liaison, Kazi Tasneem thinks that the collegiate competition was the best part of her WE Local experience. While preparing for the competition, she had to learn how to present concisely and at the same time interestingly to the broader audience. Getting feedback from the judges was very useful and helped her understand what she should focus more on next time she presents. She added that it was a detailed judging on posters and talks under different criteria – visual presentation and/or speaking style, technical content, supporting figures, results, and conclusions, contribution and applicability, and completeness. Mujan Seif, our Graduate Program Chair, attended WE Local in 2018 and 2019 and she shared the same feeling. She echoed that the judges’ feedback from the collegiate competition talks are really meant to get insight where you can make yourself better. You should not miss a chance to attend a WE Local conference! Isabella, our Graduate Programs Chair Elect thinks that it was a great opportunity to advertise her research and get constructive feedback on the presentation skills. She highly recommends this to any graduate student who has been doing research for at least a semester!
Deadline Approaching for the 2020 WE Local Collegiate Competition. Don’t forget to enter the WE Local Collegiate Competition! Submit your abstract before the deadline of Monday, November 11, 2019.
Kazi Tasneem, WE Local Programming Liaison