For Judges

Serving as a judge in the Graduate Exhibition is an excellent way to learn about research and creative scholarship happening through the University while helping students build their communication skills. For the video category, judging can be done online remotely. For the other categories, judging takes place in person.

How Judging Works at the Exhibition

Judges will be emailed with assignments and instructions several days before the Exhibition. Each category has its own judging criteria, and we encourage judges to view the rubrics beforehand to prepare. For all categories except Performance, judging is assigned at random. The presentations are purposefully intended for a general audience. Please keep this in mind if you are an expert in the field of one of the exhibits you are judging.

Guidance for Judges

To make sure that your feedback to students is beneficial, we encourage all judges to be curious, be open, be respectful, and be constructive. Graduate students have spent months or years developing the projects and performances that they are presenting. They are also learning to communicate technical and scientific ideas to a general audience, which can be challenging. Our goal is to make the Graduate Exhibition a comfortable and safe space in which graduate students can share about their work and gain new perspectives from the judges.

Remember that all Exhibition attendees—presenters, judges, and others—are expected to uphold Penn State's values, which include integrity, respect, responsibility, discovery, excellence, and community.

Judging Categories

Rubrics

Review the rubrics below to understand the judging criteria.