The countdown is on for Brock graduate students to register for Brock’s 2015 Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition.
The deadline is Friday, Jan. 23. Information about the contest and the online registration form is posted on the 3MT® website.
The contest is open to registered graduate students who are in their final stages of research in:
• a master’s by thesis
• a master’s by research project
• a PhD program
Eligibility is also extended to graduate students who have successfully defended their thesis, but have not yet graduated.
Contest participants have three minutes, and not a second more, to talk about their research and why it matters in a way that will inform and captivate a non-specialist audience. Along with keeping to the three-minute timeframe, the contestants are limited to using only one static PowerPoint slide for the duration of the presentation.
A coaching session for participants is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 7 (time and location to be determined). The session is presented by Vitae Essential Skills for Graduate Students and will be facilitated by Julia Course, actor and performance coach. Participants will learn strategies on how to: relax and prepare mind and body for a presentation, connect voice and gestures, hook the audience with a compelling opener, and rehearse techniques to minimize performance anxiety.
The contest will kick off in late February with a preliminary round from which the top presenters will advance to Brock’s 3MT® final held during the annual Mapping the New Knowledges Graduate Student Research Conference on Thursday, April 9.
The winner of Brock’s contest will receive $500 and the runner-up $250. The winner will also advance to the provincial 3MT® competition hosted by Western University on Thursday, April 23, 2015. The top finishers in Ontario move on to a 2015 national competition that is sponsored by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) and held in May.
Last year, Brock’s Leslie Nash, a master’s student in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, placed second in the province and was one of the finalists for the national contest.
“I decided to take part in the 3MT because it’s very different from presenting at conferences,” says Nash who is a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa. “I changed my 3MT® script many times as I prepared for the contest. I had to think carefully about how to explain my research in a clear and concise message and how to break down the science in a way that a general audience could understand. The 3MT® is a great opportunity for graduate students to work on communication skills.”
The 3MT® concept has had widespread international popularity since the University of Queensland launched it in 2008. In Canada, UBC ran the first university-based competition in 2011.
This year participants in the 3MT® and MNK conference events will earn credit toward a Vitae Essential Skills certificate awarded by the Dean of Graduate Studies. To find out more about this certificate, please visit Vitae Essential Skills.
Continue to watch Brock’s 3MT® website for updates about the contest.
