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Revisions to MQP Format

Beginning this year, the Department of Management is moving to a new format for the Project Presentation Day (scheduled for April 15, 2008). The format was developed by the Department's Undergraduate Policy & Curriculum Committee last year with student and faculty input and put through a number of revisions. We have finally completed the revisions and wanted to get it to you now to provide you with as much notice as possible so you could be thinking about the process and its implications for your MQP.

The salient aspects of this new format are:

1. For the morning of PPD each project team will prepare a poster and a formal 10 minute poster-presentation for delivery before a review panel that will use a formal assessment form. If the project team has been selected for consideration for the project award the review panel will be an industry/faculty review panel; if not, the review panel will be a faculty review panel. The students will also have the opportunity to present their work informally to other students, faculty, and industry representatives. (Guidelines on how to create and print a poster will be provided to students at a later date).
2. The poster session will be followed by a lunch open to students, faculty, and industry representatives. Finalists for the MQP award will be announced at lunch. Lunch will be followed by formal oral presentations by finalists for the MQP award.
3. The nominating process for the project award will also be changed and nominations will now be initiated by the student project group rather than by their faculty advisor. Student teams aspiring to compete for the MQP award will be required to submit their self nominations along with the Executive Summary of their projects in mid-March. (Students will receive a formal call for nominations with deadlines and other important dates as well as guidelines for the Executive Summary at a later date.)

The department will then contact the faculty advisors of the nominated projects for additional information. Once submissions are complete, they will be screened for acceptable quality. The selected project teams will be notified and given an approximate time for presenting during the poster session to the industry/faculty review panel. Each selected group should also be prepared for a longer, more formal presentation on the chance that they are selected to be a finalist.

Prior to the lunch period on PPD the review panel will caucus and select the finalists for the formal oral presentations. The finalists will be announced as soon as a decision has been made.

The finalists will make the formal oral presentation during the afternoon session of PPD. All Management faculty members will be encouraged to submit evaluations on finalists to the industry/faculty review panel immediately following the presentation session.

The review panel will again caucus after the afternoon presentations and select the winner(s) of the Provost's MQP Award, to be announced at a future time.

A final schedule of events for the project presentation day with times and locations will be sent out in April 2008.

Rationale for changes:

The purposes of Project Presentation Day are:

1. for students in the Department of Management to communicate outcomes of this year's MQPs to students, faculty, corporate sponsors and industry representatives,
2. for students to fulfill the oral presentation requirement for their MQPs, and
3. for the Department of Management to select the recipient(s) of the Provost's MQP Award.

As the department grows, the poster format will accommodate larger numbers of presentations more easily than the earlier format while giving all student teams the opportunity to communicate their project outcomes in a uniform manner. Further, (a) a process where requests for consideration for the award begins with the students seems stronger and healthier, (b) a process with the initial screening based on written evidence will improve quality control, and (c) a second screening and final selection of the award winner(s) carried out by an industry/faculty panel holds potential for giving the overall event more prestige without any loss in quality control.

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Last modified: February 27, 2008 16:17:49