Sweet Briar’s seventh annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of Undergraduate Scholarship (MARCUS), a one-day multi-institution, multidisciplinary forum, will be held Saturday, Oct. 8 at the College’s on-campus conference center.

MARCUS offers undergraduate scholars and researchers the genuine experience of presenting at a professional conference with peers and faculty from other colleges. “You get to see how you stack up against other people,” said Rob Granger, SBC professor of chemistry and one of the creators of MARCUS.

"Regional conferences ... can be a real affirmation of the kind of education students are getting at their own schools."
Nancy Hensel, executive officer with the Council of Undergraduate Research

Nancy Hensel, executive officer with the Council of Undergraduate Research, agrees. “Regional conferences are a neat opportunity for the students, because they get feedback from professors from other schools and they can compare their work to that of students from other colleges. It can be a real affirmation of the kind of education they’re getting at their own schools.”

When the Sweet Briar Honors Program, with help from several faculty members, laid the plans for the first MARCUS conference in 1999, such opportunities were few. The Honors Program wanted a forum for its Summer Research participants to present their work beyond their own classmates and professors. SBC met the need by creating the regional conference.

About 35 students registered that year. Participation in the oral and poster sessions doubled the following year and continued to grow, with students traveling from as far away as Massachusetts to attend. This year more than 85 students from colleges in Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are registered.

Granger believes MARCUS’ particular combination of multiple institutions and mixing all disciplines from the sciences to the humanities is still pretty rare, although single-subject undergraduate conferences are more plentiful.

“The whole undergraduate research thing has gotten pretty popular,” he said, referring to a national trend toward providing more research opportunities at the undergraduate level.

MARCUS is modeled after post-graduate conferences, with numerous sessions running concurrently. The 10- to 12-minute presentations allow time for questions and answers. Some presentations represent joint research conducted at public and private institutions, such as Hampden-Sydney and the University of Virginia.

Poster session and oral presentation schedules are available on the SBC Honors web site.

Guests are welcome to attend. There is a $7 registration fee, which is payable at the door. Registration begins at 8:15 a.m. in the lower level of the Conference Center at the College’s Florence Elston Inn. For information, please visit www.sbc.edu/marcus or e-mail marcus@sbc.edu. For directions, please call the Inn at (434) 381-6207.