The SURC ballroom is filled with posters and students presenting their work in front of other students and judges. Models strut their stuff down the runway set up in the middle of the second floor.

This is the scene set by the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE), an annual forum for Central students to showcase and present their creative work, scholarships and research. It helps students with their communication, public speaking and job interviewing skills through judges’ feedback during the presentations.

“I love SOURCE. SOURCE changed my life,” Jamie Gilbert, SOURCE chair and program coordinator, said.

Jamie, who is also the program coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Research, is a

Central alumni who attended, and even won, SOURCE and now has a doctorate. She gives SOURCE the credit for her great success.

“The best part is that SOURCE isn’t threatening,” Jamie Gilbert said. “We do offer two judges for every presentation, but they get positive feedback- it’s not to sit there and criticize. It’s to sit there and say, ‘You did this right and maybe you can work on this.’ [They’ll] give you advice that’s going to help you into your career.”

This will also be the first year that SOURCE will be held for two days. It will be taking place in the SURC on May 18 and 19.

Last year, SOURCE was held for only one day and there were about 5,000 students in attendance. There were 34 departments presenting for the event, 340 presentations performed and about 550 student presenters. This year the event organizers have approved around 385 student presenters.

“It opened up doors and possibilities for me that I didn’t previously know were there,” Meghan Gilbert, a previous SOURCE winner and ambassador, said. “Now it’s changed my career path entirely.”

Meghan described SOURCE as being a building block in one’s career. She is currently the president of the Undergraduate Research Club and Jessica Murillo-Rosales, a senior sociology major, is the vice president.

“We serve as a place where students can come and get help, do practice presentations- those type of things,” Meghan Gilbert said.

Everyone in the club has been in SOURCE and has been involved with it. The club goes into classes and explains to students what SOURCE is and why students should attend.

According to Jamie Gilbert, this year, the organizers for SOURCE are arranging to have models walking through the SURC to represent the dance, theater and fashion departments.

“The fashion show’s going to be in the SURC pit,” Jamie Gilbert said. “It’s never been in the SURC pit before so we’re really trying to bring people down.”

There will also be a group of students performing a sonnet as a SOURCE opening performance in front of the Wildcat Shop which will be about Black Lives Matter, Jamie Gilbert said.

There will be a live performance by the trombone choir, which just recently performed in Washington D.C.

Alicia Brito, senior, is the only oral sociology major presenting at SOURCE this year.

“I hope to have December through May to do my research [for SOURCE] and then come back as an alum and present my research,” Brito said. “So I really want to get the feedback part of it.”

Jessica Murillo-Rosales, a senior sociology major, is another SOURCE ambassador who will be presenting for her first time this year.

“One of the biggest things is that you also learn a lot about the community in Ellensburg and at Central itself,” Murillo-Rosales said. “Until last year, I didn’t know that SOURCE gave the opportunity for students in Elementary school, middle school, junior high and high school to come over here. So it was really great to see that this is an academic environment not just for the higher education, [but] it opened up to just all levels of education and that was something that I liked.”