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another opportunity to serve.

Each year, Benedictine faculty members serve as evaluators of the Oral Presentations by Benedictine Scholars. Their role is to hear all presentations and to assign grades to each of them. If a Jury member has served as the mentor to a presenter, she or he assigns no grade to that presenter.

The presentations ordinarily take place in April. Each student is allotted 15 minutes. In recent years, the Program has hosted two presentation sessions in the Krasa Presentation Room, from 11:30am to 1pm on the Tuesday and Thursday of the second or third week of April.

Ordinarily, Jury members are recruited by the Scholars Director. The Program is always eager to welcome new Jury members. Faculty members who wish to volunteer for this service are urged to contact the Scholars Director.

The Jury is ordinarily comprised of at least three members. Each assigns a grade to each presentation on a scale of 0-100. A presenter’s grade is the average of the grades assigned by the Jury members. Every effort is made to recruit at least one evaluator from the Humanities, one from the Social Sciences, and one from the Natural Sciences. Jury members meet after the session to confer about grades.

The grade for the Oral Presentation is averaged with the grades for the Second Draft and Final Draft. Students who average 90 or better on all three assignments will, when all other requirements are met, graduate as “Benedictine Scholars with Distinction”. A student must average 75 or better in order to graduate as a “Benedictine Scholar”.

Click here for more information about IRP grades.

In evaluating presentations, the Jury considers the following questions:

• Does the presenter convey clearly his or her study’s leading questions?
• Does the presenter convey clearly his or her replies to these questions?
• Does the presenter discuss persuasively the evidence and reasoning that lead to these replies?
• How well does the presenter manage time?
• How well does the presenter speak?
• How well does the presenter answer questions?
• What is the quality of the presenter’s handout?
• Does it offer a coherent overview of his or her project?
• Is its bibliography well prepared?

Click here for a link to the instructions given to Student Presenters.