History of the Student Research Conference

The SRC was founded in 2007 under the title of "Scholarly Undergraduate Research Fair (SURF)" which was planned and coordinated as part of the McNair Scholars Program. This was to be the undergraduate counterpart to the Graduate Student Research Conference. 2010 was the first year that the two events were combined and funded by the University and officially planned by a committee. The conference offered two presentation formats: Poster and Oral/Paper Presentations. There are a few offices on campus that have been a part of the planning of this event in this form since its beginnings in 2010, those are the Office of the Vice President for Research & the Graduate College, the Honors College, Center for Teaching and Learning, Graduate Student Senate, and the McNair program. As the university grew and evolved, so did the planning committee. However many of these offices continue to be an integral part of the annual planning of this event. In order to give credit where it is due, we have created a page which lists the representative from each office/organization who served on the planning committee for each year.

As the conference has grown, so has the need for presentation formats and commited coordinators. In 2015, the Student Research Conference was officially given to Fellowships, Opportunities, & Undergraduate Research (the largest population of participants are undergraduates with a record high in 2014), though it maintains a majority of its funding from the OVPR and college donations. After the 2015 conference, the conference committee decided to create a third format for presenting: the Creative Presentation. In a renewed effort to be inclusive of all disciplines, a special space was created for arts students. It also brought hands-on presentations from other disciplines which was an unexpected use of the format. In 2016, a coordinator for the conference was officially established after the 2016 conference saw quadruple the amount of students in the arts and the most undergraduates ever. But the 2017 conference ended up being the biggest by all accounts.