The Intensive English Institute is hosting the eighth annual Business, Education, Science, and Technology Conference at 9 a.m. on July 20.
All sessions will be on the first floor in Lincoln Hall.
Although the B.E.S.T conference is hosted by IEI, it was organized and will be led by advanced and intermediate learning and listening students including several visiting Fulbright and Kazakh Bolashak program students.
Kristin Bouton, the academic director for IEI and the IEI CEA coordinator, helped guide the students through the planning process.
All the goals, milestones, and reporting systems are created and sequenced by Bouton to help the students through the planning stages and help them work together.
Bouton will be presenting during the plenary session of the conference from 1 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. Wednesday.
There are 11 sessions in total (not including the plenary session) and during each session there are either two or three students presenting in different rooms.
For example, in session one from 9:30 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. three students are presenting their research in science, business and education in three different rooms.
The morning sessions (six of them) will start at 9:30 a.m. and end at 11:55 p.m.
The afternoon sessions start at 2 p.m. and end at 4 p.m.
During the day there will be a break for lunch between noon and 1 p.m. (lunch will not be provided), and after the final session there will be a reception from 4 to 5 p.m. in 1027 Lincoln Hall.
Jenny Brown, an instructor with IEI, said overall the conference gives students the opportunity to develop their research and oral presentations skills in a conference like setting.
She said students can build their professional presentation skills and gain confidence in communicating to a general audience.
The conference is free to attend and the public is encouraged to come out and support the students.
Brown said each presentation is like a TED Talk and anyone who enjoys TED Talks or just enjoys listing to presentations can attend and can choose to hear about several current topics in business, science, education, or technology.
“If you are someone who wants to support student growth and experience, you can come and ask them interesting questions during their Q&A,” Brown said.
There will be two check-in times for those who wish to attend.
The first is from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the second is from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
