The most important aspect of a SIP topic is that it is something you are interested in. You will be spending several months working on this topic; students who enjoy their topic have a much easier time putting in the hours than students who do not.

Plumert-Teasley Endowed Psychology SIP Fellowship.

This fellowship was established by K Psychology alums Dr. Jodie Plumert (now at the University of Iowa) and Dr. Stephanie Teasley (now at the University of Michigan), and supported by many other, generous K psychology alums.  

Typically, we are able to award up to $3,000.00 to a single psychology major who is completing summer SIP work.  The money is intended to help with travel costs, room and board, and miscellaneous expenses. 

The three criteria that will be used to choose the awardee include:

• a research placement with a psychology faculty member at a distinguished academic institution (a letter from the advisor will be required)
• demonstrated financial need
• a history of academic success in K psychology coursework.

Plumert-Teasley Endowed Psychology SIP Fellowship Grant Application Link

Kalamazoo College

Here are some on campus resources for you to look at when trying to plan your SIP research.

College Wide Summer Internships and SIP Funding

Summer Research Programs

Visit our Research and Internships page for more information on Summer Research Programs.

Summer Research Programs

You may choose based on interest. Identify an area or specific question that you are interested in writing your SIP about. Then, search PsycINFO to identify the researchers who are working on that question and read several of their papers. Then, email them to ask whether they might be willing to let you work with them over the summer on their on-going projects.

You may also choose based on location. If you know that you need to live in a particular location over the summer, peruse the Psychology websites of the institutions that are nearby and read the research interests of the faculty there. Identify those who are doing work that seems interesting to you (you will probably have to be less picky about the topic you work on if you are geographically constrained to a particular location). Then email the people to ask whether they might be willing to let you work with them over the summer on their on-going project.

 In addition, if you apply and are accepted to a summer research program (see here for more information), you may be paired with an advisor who matches your stated interests.

Finally, do not discount working with a Psych professor here at K! Many faculty in the Psych Department are engaged in research during the summer months and working with one of us can be a great basis for a Psych SIP. You should read about the research interests of Psych faculty and reach out to faculty you are interested in working with to see if they have opportunities.

Psychology SIPs can be one- or two-unit. Most students begin working on their SIPs in the summer before their Senior year. One unit SIPs are competed before Fall quarter begins; Two unit SIPs continue over the fall quarter and are completed before Winter quarter begins. It is also possible to do a one-unit Fall SIP, if individual circumstances do not allow for SIP work over the summer. Students who are interested in a one-unit Fall SIP should discuss their situation with the SIP coordinator. It is possible to get Honors on either a one-unit or two unit Psychology SIP

One-unit SIPs are smaller in scope than two-unit SIPs. They typically contain only a literature review, method, and projected results and discussion with no actual data, although some one unit SIPs do contain data. Completed one unit SIPs typically range from 20 to 30 pages in length.

Two-unit SIPs are larger in scope. They often include a literature review, method, results with statistical analyses (or qualitative analyses) of collected data, and a discussion. Completed two unit SIPs are typically longer than 30 pages in length.

The following guidelines were adopted from Jeff Radel’s web page on effective presentations.

The SIP oral presentation should be approximately 11 minutes in length after which you can expect a 3-minute question and answer period. (There will be four or five talks per session so it is very important that your presentation does not exceed 11 minutes. Please practice and time your talk to make sure it is not too long. Because this is a relatively short talk, you need to be clear on your topic. You do not need to present everything you did for your SIP. Include the most important and/or interesting one or two findings, as well as a brief summary of the relevant background literature. Also, remember that redundancy is important in an oral presentation. We used to say, “In any speech, in the introduction, ‘you need to tell them what you are going to tell them,’ then in the body you, ‘tell them,’ and finally, in the conclusion, ‘you should tell them what you told them.'”

The times listed below are approximate but should help when preparing each section of the talk.

The first four to six minutes:
The literature review should take no more than 6 minutes of the presentation because the audience is more interested in hearing about what you did for your SIP and needs only a basic review of previous research in order to understand your study. The amount of time you spend covering previous research will vary depending on the complexity of your research design. End this section by giving a very clear summary of the purpose of the present study (i.e., your hypothesis).

The last four – seven minutes:
Spend most of the presentation telling the audience what you did for your SIP. Try to make a smooth transition from the previous section by explaining how your study fits into the existing literature (e.g., the present study attempts to replicate what Smith and Jones (1980) did while controlling for gender bias…). You should follow the same logic you would use when writing a paper in APA style. After the introduction and purpose of the present study, move into a description of your methods including the participants and materials. In some cases you may want to include a picture of your apparatus or a copy of the questionnaire participants completed while you describe the method. Do not simply list questions and read them one after another with your back to the audience. Simply use the visuals as examples (e.g., “we asked questions such as x, y, and z” while pointing these out). Once you have provided a brief overview of your methods, summarize your results using figures or tables. Do not include too much information, be consistent in terms of figures and tables with respect to font size and color, etc. As stated before, you do not need to present your entire SIP if you ran two or three experiments.

Simply choose one or two of the most important and/or interesting pieces of your SIP in order to limit the number of figures and tables. Your audience would rather hear a detailed explanation of one or two crucial slides than one or two sentence overviews of 20 different tables. Be conscious of time when you are going through your slides and try to arrange your results in such a way that you could easily skip over two or three if you are running short on time (e.g., you should skip over one experiment altogether rather than cover your interpretation and discussion in the last 30 seconds). After you have presented your basic results, interpret and discuss your findings for the audience. Be clear and emphasize the “bottom line.” Did you have significant findings? If so, review them. If not, were there methodological flaws in your design? Are there one or two possible explanations for your results? Offer suggestions as to what you would do differently in the future if you had to do the study again. End the talk with a clear, concise summary of your conclusions (as listed on your last slide).

Visual Aids:
As mentioned earlier, you are encouraged to use PowerPoint for your oral presentation but transparencies are acceptable as well. PowerPoint offers very nice templates that can be used to help you organize your talk. It is also easy to bring in scanned pictures and documents (e.g., an MRI scan, a copy of the survey given to participants, a picture of participants completing a specific task, etc.). The time spent putting your presentation into PowerPoint will help you arrange the material in a logical sequence. Use high contrast colors for your slides (e.g., large dark text on a lighter background. Some basic recommendations are to make slides BIG, SIMPLE, CLEAR, and CONCISE. A humorous but useful mnemonic to remember when preparing slides for a talk is K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid. Although you may choose, recommended fonts and sizes for slides are discussed in the web tutorial (e.g., Times Roman looks nice on paper but is difficult to read on slides). Lastly, note that PowerPoint slides can be printed off as transparencies if you prefer to use overheads instead of the computer for your presentation. However, you will want to change the page orientation from the default (landscape) to letter size before you start making your slides! If you are a MacIntosh user, remember to save your presentation in PC format as we have PCs available during the conference.

Finally, remember that retention of information is reduced as the talk proceeds. Thus, if presenting a series of points on a given slide, organize them from the most important to the least important so the audience will remember the most relevant information. Also, remember to repeat and emphasize key points. And lastly, practice, practice, practice. First, practice by yourself to get comfortable with the talk. You may start by writing out your talk verbatim but go through it enough such that you can give the presentation in a conversational style (i.e., do not read your notes). Second, when you are comfortable with the talk, practice with roommates and ask them for constructive feedback on what part of the talk was unclear and for suggestions on where to cut irrelevant material.

Here are some guidelines for preparing a SIP poster for presentation. These guidelines are targeted toward research posters, but if you are preparing a poster that presents other material (e.g. a report on a SIP internship), you will find that you can adapt much of the information to your particular needs. Note that the style of writing for a poster should should be formal in its style and tone, without the use of contractions (e.g., “can’t,” “3-D”) and avoiding conversational phrases (e.g., “deal with”). However, in general the text on a poster should be much briefer than what you would have in a paper and you should rely more heavily on illustrations, diagrams, tables, and figures. Remember, a poster is not just a paper printed in large font!

General Tips for Poster Design

• Do not crowd your poster with unnecessary detail. Be selective in your choice of what to include and what to omit. Remember, however, that your poster should tell “a complete story” of the research question, background, procedure, results and implications of your study. However, this does not mean that you have to tell the entire story; it is perfectly okay to omit certain analyses or details if they are not important to the story you are telling.

• Emphasize the visual. Whenever possible, use graphs, pictures, diagrams, and drawings instead of text. Show, rather than describe!

• Font size: For the body of your text, use a font style and size that can be clearly read from a distance of 4 feet (usually about 16 to 18 point or above). For your title and name, use larger font. Be consistent with the choice of font, and use one font style only.

• Poster printing: Posters can be printed in the K College Media Center at a reduced price compared to professional services (e.g., Kinkos).