COSS Research

An abstract is a short description of the paper or presentation that you have written or composed.  It is meant to provide a brief summary of the work, including the main ideas and the conclusion you have come to about the thesis.  Used professionally in most fields when publishing a project, an abstract is meant to be understandable and approachable by all readers.  It serves as an invitation to read your work.

There are several things your abstract should contain:

• A description of the purpose of your paper or project, including the area of study to which it belongs
• A statement of the research problem or question that the research project is addressing
• Insight into the methods you used to work on the problem: evidence gathered, documents consulted, strategies pursued
• A summary of the conclusions you reached as a result of your work (if you are not finished with the work, you should include preliminary findings)
• An observation about why this project or paper is significant; what does it help us to better understand?

After reading it, the reader of the abstract should be able to understand why your work is important and why it might be interesting to read or listen to your description of the project.

The style of writing for the abstract should:

• Be clear -- try to avoid any jargon words that may make sense to you but that others may be unfamiliar with
• Be concise -- the average abstract runs from about 150-200 words
• Be coherent -- each sentence should flow smoothly into the next, leading the reader to the end; you may need to use short transitions between sections of the abstract
• Be complete -- cover all of the areas mentioned above; it is expected in an abstract that you will "give away the ending"

Submitting COSS Abstracts 2024

The Celebration of Student Scholarship (COSS) invites submissions of scholarly work in all formats from undergraduate students in any discipline. Work presented at COSS should be of the high quality appropriate for an undergraduate conference or professional meeting and may come from intramural or extramural course-based or co-curricular research and creative scholarship experiences.

Abstract Guidelines:

Abstracts should be informative and include the following information within 250 words: 
1) significance, framework, or problem that the topic addresses
2) thesis, argument, or hypothesis
3) brief research process or methods
4) product results or anticipated results.

Submitting Abstracts:

• Deadline: Wednesday, March 13th.
• Only one person needs to submit the abstract
• Will need to indicate preferred session type when submitting:
  • Poster Session (e.g. paper posters, artwork, digital graphic design projects, etc.)
  • Concurrent Session (e.g. artist talks, brief performances, extemporaneous talks, papers, PowerPoint or similar presentations)

A few answers to FAQs:

• Students may be authors on more than one submission.
• Students may present work at COSS that they have presented, or will present, at another conference or meeting.
• Students working toward an URSCA PEAK and/or presenting at NCUR must still submit their abstracts to COSS.
• Regularly scheduled classes, rehearsals, and practices do not meet during COSS (Wednesday, April 17. 2024).

For more information email: cossscholar@cord.edu