Each year for the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference, hundreds of students conduct research, write an abstract and plan their presentation. Their poster, demonstration or performance is judged by faculty, graduate students or staff from across campus.
If the thought makes you break out in a cold sweat, you’re not alone.
So, why do they do it? For some, it was a class or program requirement. Others have an eye on their future careers. Some people come for the sense of accomplishment or to learn from the challenge.
Only a few winners are chosen from each category, but no student leaves URCA without having gained something.
Read what a few students who participated in URCA 2026 said about their experience:
Pierce Austin
Growth rates of juvenile freshwater mussels (Cambarunio nebulosus) across a gradient of watershed size in the Cahaba River
“I think the value comes from being able to tell other people about the stuff you’ve worked on. Hopefully, people learn from it and talk about the topic, spread awareness. Walking in here this morning, hanging my poster up, and then being able to talk to people who are interested…that part specifically is really special.”
Kathryn Boxmeyer
What Do Early-Stage Entrepreneurs Want in Accelerator Programs?
“By participating in URCA, I learned how to put together an abstract, which was interesting. It takes time to pick up on the terminology — how to write it. When I was writing, I think I had like, 10 different takes of like, does the wording make sense? Is it using the terminology that people actually use in their studies? But I think I’ve learned that, outside of class, you train your brain in different types of thinking. In a lot of classes, it’s ‘Do you just understand the content?’ This is like, ‘Can you ask the why questions?’ And so when I’m researching and I go down a path of, what do we know about it already? You get 10 new paths, and I think that’s great to always keep learning more.”
Camille Catron
Mental Health: Barriers to Treatment and Unused Lenses
“Being able to talk about your work, present it, present ideas, do research studies, is valuable to any career. People have asked, ‘Why are you doing this project? You’re an engineer. It’s not what we do.’ But I think that’s wrong. Every perspective, every viewpoint on a problem, can help, especially for a problem like this, where it’s just so convoluted. Showing I know how to work with people, and research with people is valuable because medical devices are used on people.”
Jada Ceaser
Liberation
“I am showcasing a short documentary about Yogi Dada, a Black artist who is based in Birmingham. I often think filmmaking is not seen in a research light, despite all of the research that happens to make a film. I wanted to showcase that and shine light on what documentary is, and that research is not just STEM. I hope to encourage more people to show off their works as research as well. Having my work be seen and acknowledged for the time and the effort that I put into it is really fulfilling.”
Clara Choung
Financial Autonomy and Emotional Well-Being in Later Life: How Cognitive Impairment Status and Gender Matter
“I’m usually very shy and it’s very much out of my comfort zone. I wanted to give it a try because in the future there’ll be more experiences that I’ll have presenting, and it’s better to get practice now than then. The environment at URCA is very welcoming. It’s definitely a lot less nerve-wracking than a professional stage or a huge national conference. There’s a lot less pressure, I think, on each student.”
Zach Davis
A Phenomenological Analysis of Suburban Infrastructure
“This semester, we used phenomenology, so in contrast to reading a bunch of journal articles, I had to find more direct sources for people going through the problems that I was researching. This topic spoke to me personally as something that I also experienced. I thought it would be interesting to do something that speaks to me more personally. So not only can you hear the people’s voices that are going through this, you can hear my voice, the story that I’m telling.”
Arman Dolatabadi
Individual Differences and Task Complexity Factors in L2 Writing Performances and Processes
“We gave our participants two different essay prompts because we expected there would be a difference between them, and maybe that difference would be able to better inform language assessments. We found, actually, that there is no difference, which means that it’s okay not to include context support for an essay. It will still do a good job at testing that student’s language proficiency. [I participated because] I want to go into research as a career. This is what I want my focus to be, and I’m enjoying it.”
Dexter Gard
Artificial Neural Networks for Operations Management – A Bibliometric Approach
“I participated in URCA because I think research is fundamentally about communication, and the most important thing we can do is to get our words out there and connect with people. The thing I love most about URCA — this is my second year — is when I’m walking around and I get to see people’s posters. Just down there, I saw someone’s poster on the AI bubble. I’m a computer science major, so we had a really fantastic conversation about how the technical plateau intersects with the business plateau. That’s really what I’m here for. And it’s the highlight of my year every time.”
Donovan Gilliam
Optimizing College Pantry Stocking Policies
“So if you look right here, it shows the number of recent papers done on pantry optimization. 85 of them were done on an older population with very distinct preferences. A college campus also has distinct preferences, but there’s only one study on them. Not only was there a need, but there was a gap in the research. So this is something that a real pantry can use. For now, doing this work that can actually help people is what’s most important to me. It’s about helping people. That’s what this study is really about. We want to bring this to college pantries across the state, across the United States, and say, ‘Hey, here’s how you should optimize your pantry.’”
Saidah Hoyte
The Kinetics and Substrate Specificity of CRISPR-CAS NucC in Serratia marcescens
“I found myself enjoying the struggle. Not necessarily because I was getting the results I was expecting, but because I was learning something actively. I am learning more here and understanding more here than I do in most of my other classes. And I began to enjoy that process and that feeling, even though it can be very frustrating at times. I feel like the resilience that the process of research builds is good to have in life in general, but especially considering I want to pursue a career in healthcare. You need to build up that confidence and strength.”
Audrey Kauppila
The Epidemiology of Absence: Investigating the Cancer Incidence Gap in Alabama’s Black Belt
“This project started as a data competition that Dr. Chen was putting on. In looking at all the data and different ways that I could take it, this was the one that stood out. I wanted to participate in URCA because I’m passionate about using my technological skills to help people have increased access to good quality healthcare. … Out of the research, some of the data was really shocking. There were multiple counties within the Black Belt that only had one primary care physician. It was very startling, and helped me realize how much just a little bit of work can help out a lot of people.”
Addison Miller
American Except: A Comparative Case Study of Study Abroad’s Impacts on Young Americans’ Views on Global Citizenship
“Participating in URCA was not only a way to do something that I’ve enjoyed over the past few years, but it was also a practice in presenting my research in a different light — not just the academic and scholarly side of things, but to also talk about the potential future directions for applying this work.”
Ayush Pathak
A comparative genomics workflow for identifying Insulin-like peptides in Drosophila
“Gaining the ability to talk about your science in a way that is accessible to everybody, from tenured professors to high schoolers, that makes you a better scientist because you have to understand it at a much deeper level. If you are proficient enough to communicate across all of those audiences, then you’re doing better science as a consequence.”
Julienne Pharrams
Survivor Justice Acts: Intent vs. Impact
“I learned a lot about time management. This was something I cared really deeply about, and so I wanted to get it right. I had to figure out how to make a product that I was proud of and did justice to my topic, while also getting everything else done for the end of my senior year. And it really does mean something to me to bring awareness to this phenomenon.”
Logan Presho
Framing the Outdoors: How Communication Outside National Parks Shapes Perception, Attendance, and Environmental Care
“Research has the stigma of being super daunting. I thought you had to go down a certain sort of major. I’m a communication studies major, so it’s something that I didn’t necessarily realize is for everyone. I feel like I always thought only science is research. So being in this college in general has opened my mind to that. Completing this project, it was empowering to realize I can do research too.”
Sabrina Richard
Waorani Countermapping of the Amazon
“This is my third year presenting with URCA. The first time I conferenced, I was like, ‘I don’t really know why I’m doing it, but I’m doing it!’ I kind of fell in love with the process and learning from all the people around me. Putting together rhetorical analysis has become easier and easier. And as soon as you start to research communication, you realize everything is communicative.”
Matthew Sollitto
Understanding Family Communication Patterns and Their Impact on Parent–Child Relationships
“I am grateful for the opportunity to present because it does get me a bit out of my comfort zone, and it does push me to talk about my work and be proud of something that I took the time to complete and achieve. Talking to so many people and explaining it differently, tailored to each different person, is teaching me a lot about myself and my communication skills.”
Samiha Binta Sorrower
GNSS Spoofing Detection Approach using Multipath Delay Estimation for Autonomous Navigation
“I am going for a Ph.D., so I wanted to expose myself to doing a poster presentation and being more confident about talking about my research. Participating in URCA is also a good opportunity to connect with professors if you are looking for grad school. I’ve learned how to do literature reviews, how to find a problem, how to build my research skills, how to talk to professors or ask for help from mentors. These are all things I will need for my Ph.D.”
Faith Warner
Engineering Sustainable Solutions to Unemployment
“Sometimes people don’t have jobs when they come out of college, and I wanted to understand why. Is it because of stress? Is it because of the industry standard? Is it because of not having enough graduates to support industry? I learned a lot about unemployment in general, especially in other areas and other majors. I learned a lot about phenomenological reviews and understanding transdisciplinary research — how things can be spread across different fields, not just engineering.”
Kevin Williams
Amine-Based Thermal Swing Salting Out as a Method for Lithium Enrichment from Hypersaline Brines
“The best takeaway [from URCA 2026] has been confidence. Twice a year, we present our findings to the lab group. It’s really nerve-racking, because these are the smartest people you’ve ever met, right? But talking here to people who are legitimately interested in what I’m doing — the more I talk about it, the more confidence I get. And the more confidence I get, the more I enjoy talking about it.”