During the morning, more than 100 graduate students, recommended by their departments, will make 15-minute oral research presentations or display posters and compete for cash prizes. Panels of faculty and graduate students from outside the participants' departments will judge the presentations and posters. All sessions are open to the public.

"It's a day to celebrate our graduate students for all of their hard work and the recognition that they bring to the University," said Anthony Edwards, senior assistant to the dean of the Graduate School. "We have a very diverse graduate student population. The presenters come from varied academic backgrounds."

The oral presentations will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Students chosen to present in the competition will make 15-minute presentations in 10 categories, including communication, cultural enrichment, engineering and technological advances, humanities, the environment, health, life sciences (environment), life sciences (health), physical sciences, and social issues.

The students will describe their work and its potential value to society and answer brief questions from the judges. The first-place winners in each of the presentation categories will receive $1,000. Second-place winners will receive $300 and third-place winners $200.

Graduate students chosen to present posters will compete in either the arts, social, and life sciences category or physical sciences category. Students will display their posters from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in third floor lobby of the Russell House.

Winners of the morning's competition will be announced at the annual Graduate Student Day Awards Ceremony at 1:30 p.m. in the Russell House Ballroom. Departmental and institutional graduate student awards, including academic awards, fellowships, and outstanding thesis and dissertation awards, also will be presented at the ceremony. A reception will precede the ceremony at 12:30 p.m. in Ballroom C.

For more information, call Anthony Edwards at 7-6399 or Christine Ebert at 7-4243.

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