If you Built it, They Will Come: Strategies for Developing an Undergraduate Research Conference

The benefits of conference participation for undergraduates are now well understood, but the same cannot be said for the practical question of how to create and fund such opportunities for students, particularly at smaller liberal arts colleges. We seek to provide faculty and students with useful lessons for organizing, funding, and disseminating student research presented at discipline-specific undergraduate conferences. Hosting an undergraduate research conference pays dividends for faculty and students by a) providing incentives for undergraduates to revise and extend seminar papers for presentation, b) creating opportunities for students and faculty to meet and discuss their work among students with similar interests from other institutions, and c) offering hands-on opportunities for students at the host institution to participate in both the peer review process and event planning. Finally, we share practical lessons for how to publish student work in a publicly accessible digital repository that can be shared with potential employers, graduate schools, and other external constituencies through stable record and conference paper URLs