submit an abstract

Students

What Gulf story do you want to tell? 
We invite Gulf Scholars students to submit an abstract to present their work at the 2026 Gulf Scholars Program Conference. This is your opportunity to share your Gulf Impact Project, research, creative work, or community engagement activities—and to connect with peers, faculty, and partners from across the Gulf. 

Selected submissions will be featured in the student poster session on Day 2 of the conference. Projects of all kinds are welcome, including those that might not fit a traditional research poster format—you might present your work through maps, infographics, photos, story maps, or short media pieces. While we aim to accommodate all submissions, preference will be given to projects that demonstrate innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and meaningful community engagement. 

A select group of students will also be invited to open the conference on Day 1 with brief, two-minute presentations to all attendees during the Student Presentation Showcase. If you’d like to be considered for this opportunity, please indicate your interest on the submission form. 

Submission deadline: Sunday, February 8, at 11:59 p.m. 
Submit here: [Submission for student abstracts has closed]

Faculty & Staff

How do we strengthen the Gulf Scholars Network — together? 
The 2026 Gulf Scholars Program Conference invites faculty, staff, and partners from across the network to share ideas, tools, and stories that help us better mentor students, engage communities, and collaborate across campuses. 

The goal of these breakout sessions is to facilitate deeper thinking on our work as well as sharing models, practices, pedagogies, and resources. Sessions should be highly interactive around a core GSP idea or concern. While your abstract can be on whatever topic you feel is important to your colleagues across the network, here are some that are being discussed in various realms of the GSP and would benefit from further exploration and discussion:

• Mentoring or student leadership development
• Deepening interdisciplinary approaches and practices of the GSP
• Gulf learning and impact projects: What’s the scale? Scholars of the Gulf or Scholars in the Gulf?
• Building reciprocal community partnerships
• Innovative Gulf-focused or place-based teaching or assessment
• A creative session that models new ways of learning and working together
• Navigating tough times
• Ideas of change & change agentry: Gradual, evolutionary, abrupt, systemic, technological, social, personal, etc.

Preliminary abstracts will help us shape sessions and identify cross-campus collaborations. Final abstracts will be requested in February 2026. 

Submission deadline: Sunday, January 18, at 11:59 p.m. 
Submit here: [Submission for faculty/staff abstracts has closed.]