Poster Session Submission Guidelines

The Poster Session is the centerpiece of the Scholars Showcase and the longest-running annual event held as part of Western’s Scholars Week celebration. Designed to emulate poster presentations featured as part of professional academic conferences, Western’s poster session provides an opportunity to prepare students for future presentations in their discipline. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity for students from all disciplines to share their outstanding academic achievements — whether research, creative work, or a combination of the two — with the larger Western community, family, friends, and anyone interested in their discipline or specific project. The 2025 Poster Session, which will feature undergraduate poster presentations as well as a Graduate Student Symposium, will be held 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Wed., May 14, 2025, in Carver Gym.  

Graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to consult with their faculty mentor at Western about outstanding research or creative work to prepare their posters presentations. 

Registration and Submission Details For 2025 

• Register for the Poster Session between April 21 – April 25, 2025. Required registration details to include:

  • Name of author (and potential co-authors)
  • Mentor (WWU faculty or staff)
  • Department
  • Poster title
  • Abstract or summary

  NOTE: Your poster is not due at the time of registration; however, upon registering, you are to schedule your free poster printing appointment as soon as possible.

• Prepare poster for submission (guidelines below) 
  *Schedule to print your poster at the Student Technology Center by Wednesday, May 7, 2025
• Present your poster on Wednesday, May 14, at Carver Gym

Poster Submission Overview

The Poster Session instructional videos featured below offer guidance on 

1. setting up your poster as a PowerPoint document
2. poster requirements
3. adding text
4. adding shapes
5. adding images
6. design tips and
7. printing

Video Instruction

You may view all seven videos sequentially on YouTube, or choose to visit the single video  “Creating Research Posters” for additional instruction.

Poster Size and Orientation 

Poster should be a portrait (vertical) orientation. The printed poster should be 30 inches wide x 40 inches high. Students registered for the Poster Session may print their poster at the Student Technology Center without incurring a fee. Students are encouraged to create a digital version of their poster, too, which they can upload to their registration form for future archiving through CEDAR, Western’s scholarly repository.

Research Project Poster

Research Project Poster should include an engaging title, introduction, methods, results, and discussion, plus your name (and email contact) applicable charts or graphs, credits to the institution that sponsored your work, name of your faculty mentor and anyone who helped you along the way.

Creative Project Poster

Creative Project Poster should include an engaging title, your name (and email contact), credits to the institution that sponsored your work, the name of your faculty mentor, the medium or art form represented, visual image(s) of the work (to the extent it’s possible) or a representation of the larger project or process of creation.

Poster Abstract or Description

The content of your abstract, introduction or description, will depend on your discipline. In general, this is a short summary of your research that includes a thesis or hypothesis, a brief explanation of your research methods (as applicable) and your main outcome or findings. This explanation should not be considered an in-depth analysis of your research, but rather a summary or overview. In the event of creative work, please write a summary description or overview of your performance or creative presentation explaining the concept or inspiration, your process, and the reasoning behind your chosen form of expression or modality. (150 – 200 words)

Instructions For Poster Construction:

Presentation Poster – Printed and Digital Version

1. Open *PowerPoint to create a poster that will serve as both the print and digital versions (all WWU students have access to Microsoft PowerPoint).
2. Click on the “Design” tab, and, on the far right, click on “slide size” and choose “page setup.”
3. In the page setup window, set width to 30 in. and set height to 40 in. and click “OK” (vertical orientation only).
4. When PowerPoint asks, “Do you want to scale content up?” click on “scale.”
5. From here, design and create your poster, starting with a blank slide.
6. Depending on the visual elements you hope to include, there are many pptx tools available for visually constructing your poster. For assistance, visit the Student Technology Center in Haggard Hall.
7. When you are finished and want to save your PowerPoint, go to “file export” and save as a PDF.

[*You may use another program to create your poster; however, PowerPoint is user-friendly and compatible with other Microsoft programs as well as other design programs.]

Poster Content and Components

1. Presentation Title (required)
2. Your name & email address (required)
3. Name of the institution that sponsored your work, WWU, academic department or program your work represents (required)
4. Name of faculty mentor (required) Note: A mentor may also be a WWU staff person, such as research librarian.
5. If your research or creative work was created collaboratively, or included additional authors, include those names as well.
6. Presentation abstract, introduction, or description (required). The content of this section will depend on your discipline. In general, this is a short summary of your research that includes a thesis or hypothesis, a brief explanation of your research methods (if applicable) and your main outcome or findings. This explanation should not be considered an in-depth analysis of your research, but rather more of a summary or overview. In the event of creative work, please write a summary description of your performance or creative presentation explaining the concept or inspiration, your process, and the reasoning behind your chosen form of expression or modality. (required) 150 – 200 words
7. Research (required): Chart, graph or other form of data visualization or representation of your research findings (preliminary or conclusive). For creative work, it’s recommended you include images of work in its final form, or, in stages of productions (showing process), in addition to outcome.
8. Other visual elements or text that helps to convey and explain your research or creative work. (optional)

Sample Student Posters

NOTE: This explanation is adapted from “Research Posters: Designing for Impact,” presented by the Western Libraries’ Hacherl Research & Writing Studio and the Student Technology Center.

Goals

• Decide what information belongs on your poster (see above requirements)
• Apply good design principles for images, text and color

Focused Content

• Include just enough information
• Make your thesis extremely obvious
• Skip details, keep it simple
• Use IMRD Format to organize information (Intro, Methods, Results, Discussion)

What Not to Include

• Whole paragraphs: Use short sentences and bullet points instead.
• Citations: If citations are necessary, shrink font size to save space.
• Fun facts: Unless it is crucial to the goal of your poster, save entertaining information for your written explanation.

Special Situations: Required Text

• Sometimes assignments require too much text to be on your poster.
• Shift as much text as possible to your explanation / abstract.
• Visual Design: Use patterns, shapes, images and placement to show the relationships between your ideas.

Use of images and symbols

• As clues to help your reader understand big ideas
• As a central focus to draw attention from far away
• As visual “anchors” to help people read text more easily.
• Set up a visual path for your audience to follow. Think about how you are guiding the reader/viewer’s eye across and around the poster.

Establish Visual Hierarchy

• Use font, image sizing and prominence to establish a visual hierarchy – Make the most important aspect the most prominent, etc.
• Choose large images that will not appear pixelated.
• Use advanced search options to find large images.
• Don’t enlarge or stretch the image – it will look pixelated.

Fonts and Text

• Choose simple fonts.
• Use no more than 2-3 fonts.
• Keep text large.
• Font size should be 25 pts or larger,
• Dark text on a light background is easiest to read.

Design for Everyone: Color

• Roughly 1 in 25 people have a form of color blindness.
• Label data clearly.
• Use features other than color to help people understand information.
• Shapes, styles, patterns.
• Colors that touch each other should have different levels of brightness.

Proofreading

• Use proofreading strategies to help your brain focus on details you might otherwise miss.
• Zoom in, read backwards, read out loud, check visual details like spacing and contrast.

Which graph is easiest to read, and why?

Spacing

Don't Crowd: Leave enough blank space on your poster.

Take advantage of free resources at WWU

Visit the Hacherl Research & Writing Studio online for support with:

• Planning your research, writing content for your poster, getting an outside perspective on the clarity of your ideas.

Visit the Student Technology Center online for support with:

• Visual design, software questions, optimizing your poster for printing.

• Hacherl Research & Writing Studio
  Chat with us online or send us a draft of your poster for feedback.
• Student Technology Center
  Email: techcenter@wwu.edu, Phone: 360.650.4300