In order to present your work at SOURCE, you need to submit an abstract along with several other pieces of information that will help us develop the program. The information on this page will help you prepare your submission.

Read through the information about presenting at SOURCE and get everyone on board

The first step is to read through all of the information about presenting at SOURCE. Talk to your faculty mentor about presenting at SOURCE, and about which type of presentation is most appropriate for your work. If you have a group project, talk with the rest of your group members and make sure they are on board with presenting at SOURCE as well. If you have questions about whether or not your work is appropriate, or about accommodating special types of presentations (performances or large constructed objects, for example), contact our@cwu.edu.

Prepare your abstract and get feedback from your mentor

An abstract describes your project and the context for it in a way that is understandable for an audience of your academic peers. The abstract is limited to 250 words. The content of the abstract varies somewhat depending on your discipline, and a good first step in writing your own abstract is to look for good examples in your own discipline - your faculty mentor can help you here. In addition, we've provided some example abstracts from recent SOURCE presentations.

In general, all abstracts include the following:

• Motivation or problem statement: What is the problem you are addressing, and why does your discipline care about it? What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your work filling?
• Description of methods/procedure/approach: What did you do to address this problem, or to get your results? (e.g. analyzed historical documents, explored abstract expressionism through collage and other media, interviewed 17 students, conducted a set of experiments)
• Description of results/findings/product: As a result of the above method, procedure, or approach, what did you learn/invent/create?
• Conclusion/implications: How does what you've done address the problem or gap you identified at the beginning? What are the larger implications of your findings?

Give yourself plenty of time to write your abstract and get feedback from your mentor, especially if this is the first time you've written one. It takes time to write a good abstract. Get feedback from your faculty mentor BEFORE you make your final submission.

Assemble the additional information you need

You will need some additional information to submit your abstract, including:

• Title (limited to 100 characters)
• Names and CWU email addresses for all co-authors or co-panelists and mentors (it is OK to have off-campus co-authors and mentors as well; please include the email address with their primary affiliation)
• If your research involves animal or human subjects, you will need the file number from IACUC or HSRC. The deadline to submit your applictions to IACUC or HSRC is April 9, 2021. Applications received after April 9, 2021 will not be reviewed and approved in time to present at SOURCE.
• Any special instructions for your presentation, other than what is typically available for the type of presentation.

In addition, you will be asked to select:

• The presentation type (oral, online oral, poster, creative expression/performance, constructed/creative objects, panel);
• The campus where you would like to present (Ellensburg, Des Moines, or online);
• The general subject area of your presentation

Submit your Abstract

Done all that? then you are ready to use your online form to submit your abstract.

Finally, remind your mentor that you have submitted your abstract and they should be receiving an email prompting them to approve your submission.