“What makes a good scientific poster is an easy-to-follow story.”
Department of Chemistry Professor David Stone is gearing up for one of the winter term’s liveliest assignments: the CHM499 class, Introduction to Chemistry Research, will have its annual poster presentation at 3pm on March 21 in the Davenport Atrium.
“Posters distill a thesis," he explained, "into an at-a-glance explanation of a piece of research.”
Scientific posters are a common sight in the hallways of Chemistry spaces at U of T, a colorful and dynamic expression of research occurring within the diverse groups in the department. They are a striking visual reminder of chemistry’s influence in every aspect of contemporary life; a walk through the John C. Polanyi Research Wing of Lash Miller Hall reveals a dizzying array of projects: medical research, environmental chemistry experiments, graphics explaining the fabrication of new molecules for customized applications—just to name a few.
Done right, images and text combine to create powerful calling cards, raising curiosity about the research depicted. In this assignment, CHM499 students not only create the posters but remain on hand to answer queries and talk about their projects, thereby gaining valuable feedback on the posters as well as practice in presenting work to seasoned experts, non-specialists, and everyone in between.
“What makes a poster presentation a valuable research experience is interacting with other people about the content,” Stone said.
CHM499 is an overview of the research process—a first introduction, for many chemistry learners, to the possibility of a career in STEM, and a way to test the waters for graduate school. Students must apply for admission and, once accepted, work under the supervision of a professor in the department. Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students also support and mentor participants. (This year's application deadline is April 4, 2025.)
In addition to time spent in the lab, the class offers five workshops intended to hone students’ research skills and deepen their sense of what a career in research may involve. These workshops are themselves a journey, focusing on how to survey academic literature, meeting the challenges of job-hunting, communicating with different audiences, writing a thesis and, finally, exploring the nuts and bolts of creating a poster presentation.
“We had a grad student named Julia Bayne in the Stephan Group who had been involved as a TA in the course communities and with the Writing-Integrated Teaching Program (WIT). She wanted to work on something for the CHM499 students… so she did a Chemistry Teaching Fellowship Program (CTFP) in 2019 to develop the five workshops,” explained Stone.
“There are one or two courses that have poster presentations embedded within them, so some CHM499 students will have done a poster already, while others haven’t got that experience. The workshop puts everyone on the same footing.”
Bayne’s poster workshop was an immediate success. "We definitely saw a huge uptick in poster quality after the workshop introduced basic design principles—font choices, how to use colour to highlight information--and most of all how to think about the sequence of information presented. What do you leave out? What stays in?”
As part of the process, students also critique the posters currently on the walls in the Department of Chemistry before making their own posters and presenting them in the Davenport Atrium.
Stone said the response from students to the assignment was incredibly positive. “We hired a TA to specifically run the workshop program, to be available to students for consultation, co-present the workshop and run surveys after each one. This lets us build in improvements going forward.”
"In terms of the academic outcomes, the thesis is the course assignment that counts for the most weight in grades,” said Stone. “But the poster session is a highlight for students, grad students, postdocs and faculty. There’s a real energy in the room.”
"For many students it’s their first opportunity to tell other people about what they’ve been doing and find out what their classmates have been researching. They attend the workshops together but haven’t necessarily connected across subdisciplines.”
Presenting a poster is also, crucially, a chance to practice networking. “If they go to the Undergraduate Students’ Chemistry Conference, or if they can present at a Chemical Institute of Canada or American Chemical Society conference, CHM499 leaves studends better prepared. It matters, because there they are meeting people from research foundations and companies who could be potential job leads.”
The presentation on March 21st is open to members of the Chemistry community and Stone emphasized that everyone is welcome to participate: view a poster, enjoy a snack, and take the chance to both support a student and learn by asking questions about their research results.
“CHM499 is intended to enable students to navigate the post-graduation landscape,” said Stone. “Whether or not they go on to careers in chemistry, the thesis and poster are concrete accomplishments. Students can say: “This is what I did. I designed this, I wrote this, I presented it.”
The poster session is a highlight for students, grad students, postdocs and faculty. There’s a real energy in the room. - Prof. David Stone