Submit a Proposal

All UWindsor students are eligible to submit proposals for the conference. This includes full-time, part-time, undergraduate, and graduate students from all faculties and programs. 

When submitting your conference proposal we will ask you to relate it in some way to one of the following:

• One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• International Decade for People of African Descent 2015 - 2024
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

Typically, you would review the various themes and then provide an existing connection to one of the themes or a future potential connection to one of the themes. 

Feel free to reach out to Dr. Tim Brunet tbrunet@uwindsor.ca if you would like some assistance finding a connection to the conference theme.

This conference celebrates UWindsor students’ research, scholarship, and original creative activity. It is an expression of the goals and aspirations of our university, to develop deeper and broader connections between learning and the UWindsor community.

Many forms of original work are welcomed, such as:

• Research
• Creative Art
• Performance
• Invention or sales pitch
• Interactive educational tools
• and more...!

Submissions could be stemming from individuals, volunteering, or course-related work, as long as the work belongs to the participants, or they have permission to show and share the work from owners of the content. 

Presentations are limited to eight minutes and may be any one of the following categories:

• Oral Presentation 
• Visual Presentation 
• Performance
• Media/Film Production
• Others (please specify) 

Depending on the nature of your display, there can be in-person or online options to present. 

The UWill Discover conference is an exciting opportunity to share your work among colleagues on campus. The conference is organized for students by students with assistance from faculty mentors and advisors on campus. UWill Discover is an experiential learning opportunity where you can practice presenting, learn how to write a proposal, and get feedback from the UWindsor community members. In short, if you've come this far, you should go for it. You can find assistance for submitting your proposal through your peers (maybe some of them have participated in past UWill Discover conferences) or an academic advisor/professor. Additionally, you can reach out to uwilldiscover@uwindsor.ca for recommendations about finding assistance.

All participants must submit an abstract with a maximum of 200 words and a proposal description that explains your submission and includes in-text citations (500 words). Your list of references is submitted in a separate field. An abstract is typically a short paragraph included at the beginning of a completed research paper. Many of your works are still incomplete. We understand that this may change between now and the conference. The abstract allows reviewers and readers to understand your research question, your findings, how you conducted the research, and the potential impacts of your research findings in a few words.

The proposal section is a more thorough description of your project. A strong proposal tells a story about your creative work or research. It signals to reviewers your content intentions and it will signal to your audience members what they will be hearing when they come to your presentation. Including keywords that can be used to signal other researchers in the field (or beyond) provides opportunities for discussion within a body of knowledge or research community and it makes your work easier to find in online environments such as scholar.uwindsor.ca. Finally, the proposal section provides an opportunity to share any special activities you may have planned during the session.

Please see below for helpful resources on writing abstracts and conference proposals:

• American Psychological Association worksheets
• Abstract Essentials (UWindsor's Writing Support Desk)
• University of Toronto Writing Advice - Abstract
• The Writing Centre - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

When you submit a conference proposal, you should demonstrate that you have reviewed a knowledge framework. Share with reviewers your level of knowledge about the literature and demonstrate how you will contribute to that body of knowledge.
Since UWill Discover is a multi-disciplinary conference, please use the citation style guide that suits your discipline. You can find citation style guide information and resources on the Leddy Library website. 

Use the following format for naming format for any documents submitted: "lastname_firstname_theFirstThreeWordsofYourPresentation".

Abstracts are limited to 250 words. The proposal description is limited to 800 words inclusive of your references. It is not likely that you can fit in all of our references, you should use in-text citations and the list the primary references for your presentation in your proposal description. 

Presenting research that is in progress at UWill Discover provides students with the opportunity to think critically about their research methods, new bodies of knowledge presented by other speakers, and the potential benefits and consequences of their research work. If you have an exciting research project in the making, you should share it with UWill Discover!

Reach out to your personal networks!

• Reach out to your professor(s) during their office hours. It is ok to bring a friend.
• Meet with your advisor if you are a research assistant.
• Connect with the Outstanding Scholars Coordinator (tbrunet@uwindsor.ca)
• Your friends with previous UWill Discover experience.
• Check-in with UWindsor's Writing Support Desk.