On October 8th, Emma, Katie, and Dr. Sebree (along with other UNI students) traveled to St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA for the regional ACS (American Chemical Society) conference. This included students from all over Iowa and Illinois.
The day began with talks by students, lunch, and then poster sessions that BETA presented at, ending with a keynote speaker about being a science professor at a liberal arts college.
Katie and Emma standing by the BETA poster
Throughout the day and presentation, Katie noted something unique about UNI's philosophy on student research. UNI is unique that student's have the opportunities that those on the BETA team participate in.
"UNI is very lucky." -Katie
Emma headed the BETA poster and had an experience with a sharp learning curve because she presented the poster Jessica and Jose presented at the IAS conference in the spring: actinometry. Emma has been working in the geology portion of the project pretty heavily over the past weeks and it was a challenge to change gears so rapidly, but that didn't stop her.
"All of the feedback was positive." -Emma
The team still wanted to take the opportunity to share some of the exciting results that hadn't been gathered the last time BETA went to the ACS regional conference and it was, as Emma noted, well received.
Upon further reflection, Emma and Katie had some ideas about what to change for next year (when hopefully BETA will make a third appearance)...
"Give an actual power point presentation vs. a poster. Posters aren’t as effective at conveying ideas in my opinion." -Katie
"I wouldn’t wear brand new dress shoes. Oops." -Emma
The conference was fairly low-key and inviting and the scariest part of the day for Katie was...
"Getting up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday." -Katie
All in all, it was a successful day celebrating the achievements of undergraduates participating in research and hopefully BETA will be able to share even more results the third time around next fall!
View of the poster session in progress