Thesis

Responses to Questions from the Post-Conference Survey

Out of 235 people who presented at the conference, 65 completed the pre-conference survey and 45 completed the post-conference survey. However out of the data submitted only 39 records were usable.

Participant	43. Briefly describe suggestions for improving the conference:
2	don't have the late posters
3	I feel that all rooms for presenting should have row seating and that there should be a short break between the luncheon and the first presentation in order for people to have a few minutes to be seated and do last minute preparations. Our room was too small to accomodate people and it looked as if people wanted to enter after the session had already started, but there was no room and I think they didn't have time to move from the luncheon to the presentation room in such a short time.
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5	While the split presentation was meant to provide a broad experience, I would have appreciated a panel presentation with other students doing policy analyses.
6	More teachers encouraging their students to attend.
7	Limit time of luncheon, guest speakers (although they were very good). What presenters are thinking about during the luncheon is mainly their presentation, it's hard to enjoy all the festivities.
8	I would say that for my second conference I thought it went very smoothly. No sugestions.
9	I understand the point of placing people from different fields together as it forces students to listen to topics that they may have otherwise not listened to etc, but next year could you at least stay within the colleges because for a psych topic presentator to present with bio projects (of which i had absolutely NO interest or even knowledge of their topic) somewhat hindered my learning. Had I been placed with people from perhaps anthropology or sociology, i would have learned about a topic that is much more relevant to my field and to my interests.
10	Perhaps you could have the posters in the main portion of the CMU during the appropriate presentation times, and then move the other one's into the corridors during that time. This may eliminate some confusion. Otherwise, great job, I really appreciate all of the work you put into preparing and implementing this conference.
11	It would have been nice to receive something beforehand to tell us what was going on- procedures for getting feedback etc.
12	the room i was in had the power point stuff, but it was on the same level as the audience and in the front and center so it blocked the view of the audience to see. that should be changed. other than that, it went good.
13	the conference was great, it went smoothly, was seemingly well planned and it was a good experience for the students involved. The only downfall was the speaker and some of those individuals that spoke after her. First of all the main speaker was more concerned about explaining how great she was and what a great job she had. Secondly, three of the four girls who followed her did the same things. I got how great our school is and how great their respective teachers were. Is this a banquet for the conference or an honorary speach for fluffing the egos of those professors? Though feel-good optimism has it's place, here it was grossly overcompensated for and became quite tiresome. Now I enjoy attending this school as much as anyone and I too have had some excellent professors, but these orations were absurd. Ms. Bakkegard was the only individual of the five that had something productive to say. I mean no offense to the other four women, but I hope you change your criteria for who is selected for these roles next year. Please don't take this personally for it is not meant in that fashion. It is merely one persons observations. Overall I feel that the conference was an immense success and hope that future MSUM students can continue to benefit from it. As a student, thank you for the opportunity that you have allowed me.
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15	Require and encourage more questions. Not elaborating after a presentation is sily, and leaves too many doors unopened. Those advisor who watch rooms, must be the ones to bring out questions.
16	Increased advertising would probably bring more people to the event. The late poster session was also pretty slow. Maybe have them earlier in the day when more people are still on campus.
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19	none
21	The only thing that was disappointing is that there were not all that many people observing. I realize that you advertise a lot so I do not know how to make this improvement but the larger the audience, the more exciting I find a presentation.
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23	Make a little bit of time in between the lunch and when the first presentation starts. I think that some people may have felt rushed to get to their session on time.
24	I would advertise it more, and maybe put the book out that lists the presentations and their summary so that people who are not presenting in the conference, but are interested in attending some presentations my choose a couple to attend.
25	Standardized posters, or presentation scheme(of one type at different times so students can get an overview of their department if they want)
26	I think that the it would be more helpful if there was more time before the presentations began and the lunch ended! Also, I think that it would be great if the presentation topics were posted...a little more noticably.
28	SHorten the student responses to the key-note speaker. It was very boring to listen to them. I left early from the lunch
29	Please, Please, Please, do not make students sit through an hour and half of people talking (during the luncheon) before we have to do our presentations. I would have much rather spent that time looking over my material and other peoples poster displays. Or, if you do have people talk, let there be time inbetween people's speeches for people to leave. I thought it was rude of people to leave when people were talking, yet that was the most boring thing I had to sit through. I go to MSUM for my reasons and have my own level of "pride". I do not need to know why other people went there, and do not appreciate speeches on MSUM pride and excitement. Other than that it was ok.
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32	The last poster session was too late and everyone had gone home by the end. I was in the first poster session last year and had many people talk to me. It was kind of disappointing to be in the final one this year. I think it was because everyone left after talks were finished.
33	Have the posters in number order - they were all scattered and I couldn't find a lot. Think more about what talks people want to go to and in that I mean, science majors want to go to science projects - however - they're ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! And that was very frustrating!! No poster sessions at 3:50 because everyone's already left. More space between posters - too crowded.
34	maybe not have a poster session that goes from 3:50-4:30. No one was around after the second session, and if they were, they were there to take down their posters, and pick up the certificates. Don't put the posters in the Keise(SP) hallway--out of the way of everything else--feel secluded.
35	Don't put such widely differing presentations together. While I do undertand the benefits of mixed audiences, blank stares from science students during a history presentation is hardly encouraging. A possiblity would be to divide the sessions by Colleges: Arts and Humanities together, Business and Industry together, Education and Human Services together, Social and Natural Sciences together.
36	I felt the student panel at the luncheon was somewhat out of place. Why do you need 4 selected students to comment and react to the keynote speaker? It seemed like a waste of time to me.
37	shorten speakers and allow more time to get to first(1pm) sessions esp. allow a bathroom break before running to first session...we didn't get out of lunch until nearly 1pm
38	I think you all have done a great job on the confernce. Keep up the good work!!
39	Get more people that are looking for employees to come to see how hard we work.
40	I know with so many presentations this would be difficult, but it would be nice to group presentations in terms of interests. In my session there was presentation on racial profiling, Chinese hamster lung, and female genital mutilation--three very unrelated topics. People were constantly coming in and out of the room between sessions. If rooms had related topics, I think people would be more apt to stay in the room and it would make it easier for people to get to the sessions they want to go to.
41	Make sure the presenter's name or number is on the door of the room where they are presenting!!!! I missed one workshop because the presenter's name and the number of her presentation WAS NOT on the paper on the door. I did not open the door to look inside as I did not want to be rude and interupt whoever was presenting. I asked the assistants for help they checked and had the same results as I did. The same thing happed at the next presentation I went to but someone suggested I look inside, fortunatly, she already had an overhead up or I would not have known as I did not know what the presenter looked like and I would have probably spent the entire time trying to find the right room. It was VERY FRUSTRATING AND DISAPOINTING!! Now that I'm done gripping--because there is no way a person can possibly attend as many of the presentations one is interested in, it would be great if somehow each room could be video taped and interested parties could view them at a later time. Of course this would mean more volunteers would be needed to donate use of camcorders and man them as well as making certain the correct titles and presenters were placed on each video and then placed in the library or some other public location.
42	Publicize more to the general public.