A Review of SURF Day 2021 From the Students Who Participated In It
SURF or the Student Undergraduate Research Forum is a tradition at Elon that many Elon students take part in. Classes are canceled for the day to celebrate the presentations of Elon students and their hard work.
As the SURF website states, “Due to COVID-19, SURF 2021 is entirely online. The oral presentation sessions will occur via Zoom Webinars, while the poster presentation sessions will be carried out via Gather. SURF 2021 has a total of 234 presentations, including two interdisciplinary symposia named ‘South Asia and the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century’ and ‘Sustainability Across the Disciplines.’ Fifty-eight of these presentations are self-identified as projects related to topics about diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and anti-racism.”
The Edge caught up with a couple of students who participated in SURF this semester during Covid-19 times and heard more about their experience that day.
We first spoke with senior Allison Curran who participated in SURF as a requirement for her French Senior Capstone Research Seminar. “My SURF presentation was about #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc, which are two social justice movements against sexual harassment and sexual violence in the U.S. and France respectively, and their public perceptions of as a result of social media and each of their individual cultural contexts,” Curran says.
“In the past, I’ve gone to SURF presentations and poster sessions and being online as opposed to in person this year definitely gave it a different overall feel,” she continues. “Despite that though I don’t think the change negatively impacted the experience too much, because I was still able to field questions and answers and see my old professors and friends in the ‘audience’ which was still a really great feeling.”
We then spoke to Emily Holland, another Elon University student who participated in SURF in order to increase awareness about her research topic among the university community and also to promote the Writing Center. “I wanted to show what student writing experiences at Elon can lead to after graduation—and because I wanted the experience of sharing that knowledge for myself,” Holland says.
Holland also comments on the idea of the virtual SURF day and how it took away from the usual experience of SURF. “I did not like the online aspect of the conference this year as the platform for the poster presentations, Gather, was very difficult to navigate, although being able to connect to my own presentation and others’ from home was convenient.”
Holland’s project was on the diversity of the university’s writing experiences within the Writing Center and the many alumni which have contributed to it.
“My project was titled ‘'Thanks, Writing Center!' Analyzing the Workplace Writing Experiences of Writing Center Consultant Alumni,’” Holland says. “My poster contained the results of a survey sent out in the fall of 2019 that showed the diversity of university writing experiences (in and out of the Writing Center) that influenced alumni’s workplace writing in terms of the techniques and processes that they use, their writing-related values, and their understanding of writing as a whole.”
SURF day has many different faces here at Elon. Whether you’re participating in the festivities, looking forward to doing research in the future, or taking the day to do (cough) other non-academic activities, SURF day is an Elon tradition you can’t miss.
The Edge congratulates Curran, Holland, and all undergraduate researchers at Elon on their hard work and successful presentations despite new and potentially confusing platforms.
Cover photo embedded from the Elon University official Twitter account.