“One slide, no props, three minutes.” That will be the challenge that representatives from Ontario graduate schools will face when they square off in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) provincial championships at York University in spring of 2016.
Earlier in May, at the Ontario Council of Graduate Schools Dean’s annual retreat, it was announced that York University was awarded the opportunity to host the provincial finals after Western University’s upcoming hosting duties in 2015. The event will bring together some of the province’s brightest graduate students to share their work at York U’s Keele campus.
"I am absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to promote some of the wonderful research taking place across our province," says Faculty of Graduate Studies Dean Barbara Crow. "It will help bring graduate studies into the limelight and allow us to feature some groundbreaking work for our entire campus community."
The 3MT is an international competition for graduate students in which participants present their research and its wider impact in three minutes or less to a panel of non-specialist judges. It is not an exercise in trivialising or "dumbing-down" research. Instead it challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can be presented concisely and engagingly. Competitors are judged not only on how well they communicate their complex research – they also have to convince the judges that they want to know more about the subject.
2016 will be the fourth year York University has participated in the competition, and Crow says the Faculty of Graduate Studies is looking forward to topping the fun and exciting provincial competitions held previously at Queen's, McMaster, and the upcoming event at Western.
The competition offers an opportunity for the University to show off its campuses to students from across the province, and to share the diverse and innovative research of York's graduate students from across all disciplines.