Allison Snow: This started 12 years ago as a way to feature undergraduate research projects and it's just grown and grown. Recently we have more students getting involved in research than we have in the past, and wanting to do research, and this is just a wonderful way for them to show what they've accomplished.

They submit an abstract in April and that abstract is a summary of what they're going to be presenting their work on. Then when they come here they bring a poster or something that we can look at and they have three faculty members judging their work as well as a lot of their colleagues and friends coming to see their work. Then, the scores are tallied up at the end of the session, and we give out the awards. The students are a little nervous because they're getting judged, but they're also very proud about what they're doing and the minute you start talking to them, they own these projects and they're excited about them. They've been working really hard and you can tell from the way they speak about it that it's a really meaningful experience to them.

Matthew Borths: One of the judges at another undergraduate research forum came up to me and had this whole series of questions ready to go just from reading my abstract. And I was able to respond and then elaborate on those. We kind of reversed roles as professor and student It's really exciting. I'm working on making it, in academia and also just contributing to this larger body of knowledge about life's history.

Snow: We think of research as anytime you're asking a question that hasn't been answered before and you're contributing to the scholarship in your field. So, a lot of times people only think of sciences but-that gets in the news a lot whenever there's a new cure for cancer or something like that. But history, if they're in linguistics, if they're in engineering, every faculty member, just about, in the whole university is doing some type of research, so these are the areas that students can get involved in.

It's great for them to get started as soon as possible, so that they can figure out what they can do after college. If they want to go to graduate school, professional school, they might continue some of the work they're doing now. They might shift a little bit. But they're always more mature, they have more confidence, they've got great problem-solving abilities. So there are many benefits to doing research whether you go straight on or not.

Laura Ensign: I was important for me because it changed my entire future. I was initially thinking about maybe going to med school-because I'm a chemical engineer - med school or maybe getting a process job, that sort of thing. But now I'm going to graduate school. With research, I uncovered this inquisitive sort of side of myself that I didn't know was there.

Noel Voltz: I do want to take this to the dissertation level, ultimately, because nothing has been done on this whole area, free women of color. Free women of color generally haven't been studied, particularly in New Orleans, there's just really not much out there, and that makes this a phenomenal topic to carry on to the dissertation level.

Snow: Often one project leads to another project. We have some students who are on their second presentation. They basically often will get addicted to research.