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UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School hosts first-ever Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition
Public invited to attend competition on Wednesday, Nov. 4

(Chapel Hill, N.C. – Nov. 2, 2015) – The Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will host its first-ever Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

 

 

The public is invited to watch as 10 doctoral students present their research on a stage, in three minutes, using one slide and no props other than the one slide. The winner of the campus competition will receive $1,000; the runner-up and People’s Choice awardee (determined by the audience) will each receive $500. The campus finalist advances to the regional competition at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools in February 2016 in Charlotte, N.C.

 

 

The 3MT® was developed by the University of Queensland and is now held in more than 200 universities around the world. The competition provides students with an opportunity to hone their communication skills while distilling their dissertation to the most important features.

 

 

“Students, during their academic training, learn how to communicate with an academic audience,” said Steve Matson, dean of The Graduate School. “However, they do not frequently have a chance to share their work with a general audience in a way that captures the importance of their work and its relevance to the world today. We’re pleased that the audience at this competition will determine one of our campus winners.”

 

 

Doctoral students from a variety of disciplines participated in an earlier judged preliminary round competition, and the 10 finalists for the Nov. 4 competition are:
Nicole Bauer (history) – In the Kingdom of Shadows: Secrecy and Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France
Elizabeth Cutrer (education) – “Getting what I’ve always got” – A multi-domain literacy coaching approach to support teachers resistant to change
Evan Faulkenbury (history) – The Voter Education Project and the Civil Rights Movement
Mejs Hasan (geological sciences) – Using Satellites to Monitor Water Pollution
Bianca Lopez (curriculum for the environment and ecology) – Know your backyard: Urbanization and its effects on plant communities
Colleen O’Neil (chemistry) – Single Molecule Sequencing: The Key to Precision Medicine
Kayla Peck (biology) – Host Range Expansion of MERS-Coronavirus
Marni Siegel (curriculum in genetics and molecular biology) – The Evolution of Breast Cancer Metastasis
Nick Wagner (psychology) – Early origins of externalizing psychopathology
Megan Wildes (School of Nursing) – Tools for Life: Resiliency 101 and Coping with Stress

Todd Boyette, director of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, will serve as the master of ceremonies for the final round. A panel of judges will assess the participants’ ability to clearly explain the significance of their research, and their engagement with the audience, among other criteria. Judges for the final round are:

Joel Curran, vice chancellor for communications and public affairs, UNC-Chapel Hill
Brian Malow, curator of the SECU Daily Planet and science communicator, N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences
Zach Ward, owner, executive producer and artistic director, DSI Comedy Theater
Kelly Wolff, general manager, The Daily Tar Heel

“Effective communication is the number one transferable skill employers seek in job candidates,” said Brian Rybarczyk, director of Academic and Professional Development within The Graduate School. “3MT® is a professional development opportunity for graduate students to develop verbal communication skills. Students have to translate their research for a non-expert audience, make it accessible, highlight its importance and connect their work to the world outside an academic setting.”

More information about the 3MT® is available on the Three Minute Thesis website.

-Carolina-

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 78 bachelor’s, 112 master’s, 68 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools and the College of Arts and Sciences. Every day, faculty – including two Nobel Laureates – staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s more than 308,000 alumni live in all 50 states and 150 countries. More than 167,000 live in North Carolina.

UNC Graduate School contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-6326, saine@email.unc.edu
Communications and Public Affairs contact: Michael John, (919) 445-8360, Michael.john@unc.edu

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