Research Brief Guidelines

Subject Areas

Students may submit a paper on any topic, provided that the student has worked with a faculty mentor from SUNY Orange throughout the course of completing that research paper, poster, or project.

Note: If a student has completed research with a mentor from another institution through a program sponsored by SUNY Orange, please contact Michele Iannuzzi Sucich (at michele.iannuzzisucich@ sunyorange.edu) to determine if that research is eligible for presentation at the SOARS Conference.

 

Approach

The methods and tools of research and analysis varies from discipline to discipline. For example, field work might be part of an anthropology presentation while lab reports would be featured in a scientific or technical paper. Additionally, research from introductory courses (such as English 101 and 102) would provide a brief, research-based analysis of a topic that is new to the student, but perhaps not to the field. All submissions must show the results of research, reflection, analysis, and an original perspective. Students should work closely with their mentors early on to determine the appropriate nature and scope of their research.

 

Criteria

Research Briefs is a category meant for students who have conducted research at a smaller scale than intended for the other categories. These projects typically would not involve a full write-up with a thorough literature review; instead, investigative assignments that result in 3-4 written pages would be appropriate for the Research Briefs category. Students should be sure to present their findings within the context of a clearly stated question or thesis.

Students’ work will be evaluated on the basis of the quality of research, of the written work, and of the creative piece, project, or poster. Students will receive feedback from faculty readers by February 7th. They then have the option of making revisions to their work if they choose before presenting it at the conference in mid-March.

 

Guidelines for Research:

• Research should include reputable, academic sources but these are not required.
• In general, follow the guidelines of the particular discipline in terms of the expectations for scholarly research (i.e., for the sciences, peer-reviewed primary sources from scholarly journals).
• The method of documentation should be whatever is appropriate to the discipline (i.e., MLA for the Humanities, APA for the Social Sciences, CMS for History)

 

Length of Written Work

Research Briefs

• From 3 to 6 typewritten, double-spaced pages of text
• [Papers that are 7 or more pages in length should be submitted in the “Research Paper” category]

 

Format

• The paper must be typed (Times New Roman font size 11 or 12 or Calibri font size 11), double-spaced, with left-hand margin of 1” and at least 1” top, bottom, and right.
• Pages must be numbered with Arabic numerals in the upper right-hand corner.

• The title page must include:
  • student’s name, home address, e-mail address, and phone number
  • title of paper
  • faculty mentor’s name, e-mail address, and phone number
  • title of course for which the paper was written or the project was created, or a statement that the work was done independent of a course

Submission

• Each paper, project, brief, or poster must be submitted electronically to Michele Iannuzzi-Sucich at Michele.IannuzziSucich@SUNYOrange.edu.
• Each individual submitting to the conference must complete the submission form found on the SOARS web site.
• An e-mail from the faculty mentor must be sent verifying approval of the submission.

 

Submission Deadline: Please refer to the Dates to Remember page for current submission deadlines.