Students Lead First Women’s Undergraduate Research Conference

On Saturday, October 13, 2018, Meredith College held its first student-run Women’s Undergraduate Research Conference (WURC).

Before the conference held in the library on Saturday, the week was filled with research-related workshops and events. Monday started off with a “Do you want to be involved in research?” event, where different professors came and spoke about their research on campus. On Tuesday there was an idea generation workshop where students could drop in and talk about potential research ideas. Wednesday was an abstract writing workshop led by Gaia Cantelli from Duke University and Thursday was a LinkedIn workshop led by Meredith’s very own Career Services department.

On Friday evening there was a research crawl and a research slam to showcase campus resources and research ideas. These were new events for the campus and introduced excellent ways for our students to learn what the campus has to offer. The research crawl involved research labs and studios all over campus. Students and faculty were able to visit these research sites and see the type of work students’ conduct. The research slam was a way too for students to give a short pitch on the type of research they do or have done.

Saturday’s conference involved students from many different disciplines and had students not only from Meredith but NC State too. In the future the hope is to expand WURC to more North Carolina schools. The goal of this conference is to empower women in research and allow for an interdisciplinary research platform for undergraduates to present their work. We encourage every discipline and the conference is also open to males. We want to provide a space for underrepresented groups in research, like women, to be able to present their research as well as attend workshops that help further them in their academic and career goals.