Fifteen graduate students are spending their Reading Week refining presentations as they prepare for Brock’s 2016 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) preliminary round, which will be held Tuesday, Feb. 23 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Pond Inlet.

The contest, which is open to everyone to watch, challenges graduate students to tell their research story in a fraction of the time typically allotted to research presentations and in a way that conveys the nature and importance of complex research to a non-specialist audience and panel of judges.

“Think of the 3MT event as a banquet-size research and scholarship feast,” says Mike Plyley, Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies. “We have an excellent cross-section of graduate student researchers and scholars from across the campus and the topics cover a wide swath of fields.”

Judging the preliminary round will be Grant Armstrong, Associate Vice President, Human Resources; Erica Bajer, Writer/Editor, University Marketing and Communications; and Ryan McCarthy, Director, Research Services.

The judges will score each presentation based on three key criteria — comprehension, engagement, and communication. The presenters are kept to three minutes and limited to using one static PowerPoint slide.

The Feb. 23 preliminary round will determine the top five presenters who will advance to the 3MT contest finals that will be held on Thursday, April 7 as part of the 11th Annual Mapping the New Knowledges Graduate Student Research Conference.

The overall winner of Brock’s contest will receive $500 and the runner-up $250. Brock’s winner also will advance to the provincial 3MT competition hosted by Wilfrid Laurier University on Thursday, April 14. The top finishers in Ontario move on to a 2016 national competition that is sponsored by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies and held later in the spring.

“Brock started holding the contest three years ago and each year the presentations get better and better,” says Professor Kim Gammage, Brock’s 3MT co-ordinator. “There are more expectations on graduate students to develop communication skills that bring their research to life for broad audiences. That’s what this contest is all about.”

A coaching session for participants was held in early January. The session was presented by Vitae Essential Skills for Graduate Students and was facilitated by Julia Course, actor and performance coach. She shared strategies on how to relax and prepare mind and body for a presentation, how to connect voice and gestures, how to hook the audience with a compelling opener, and various rehearsal techniques to minimize performance anxiety.

Brock’s 2015 3MT champion, Matthew Nikitczuk, a MSc student in Earth Sciences, says the contest is a good all around experience.

“When I first heard about the contest as an undergraduate student I was interested,” he says. “I was in the last year of my master’s research and I realized it was my last chance to participate.

“It gives you and your research a chance to get publicity. It helps you improve the skill of communicating complicated themes simply. You get to meet other fellow contestants, make new friends, and learn about what other types of research are going on.”

The 3MT competition was initially developed in Australia by the University of Queensland in 2008, soon followed by other Australian and New Zealand universities, culminating in the first Trans Tasman competition held in 2010. Since then, the 3MT has spread internationally and is now a regular event held at universities across Canada.