Ever imagine reducing your 80,000-word undergraduate research thesis to three minutes and one slide? Yes, one powerpoint slide. About 30 undergraduate students will be doing exactly that Sunday, March 30 to compete in U of T’s first undergraduate Three Minute Thesis competition.
NANCY JI/THE VARSITY
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is an academic competition developed by the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, and is typically directed at graduate students. However, considering the wide range of undergraduate research at the University of Toronto, Vipal Jain and Madeleine Bareau, two undergrads at U of T thought it would be exciting to have an undergraduate 3MT competition.
There are some very specific rules in the competition such that participants are allowed to use one “single static PowerPoint slide.” In addition, “no slide transitions, animations, or ‘movement’ of any description are allowed.” Candidates are not allowed to use any electronic media, props, or equipment, and of course, presentation time is limited to an absolute maximum of three minutes.
The competition will be adjudicated by a very well-accomplished panel of judges, including Mark Kingwell, an award-winning professor of philosophy at U of T, and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. Isha Datar, the executive director of New Harvest, a non-profit organization advancing cell-cultured meat, will also be judging, as will Jessica Prince, a litigator and the top speaker at the 2007 World Universities Debating Championship, and a coach for speakers at the 2013 TEDxToronto conference.
Jain, co-founder of the undergraduate 3MT, specified that the idea of hosting this competition for undergraduate students stemmed from her own curiosity about the research conducted by other students here at U of T. “U of T has various departments that offer research courses, but personally, I know very little about the research done in areas outside of my own discipline,” she said. This is where 3MT steps in to bring together students from different disciplines to talk about their research in an engaging manner. “Our goal is to highlight the innovative research done by the undergraduates at U of T,” said Jain. U of T is the top research university in Canada, yet undergraduate research is continually overshadowed.
Bareau mentioned similar reasons as well. “Research is not easy to come by as an undergraduate student. We rarely hear about the different kinds of research that are being conducted especially across disciplines,” she said. Moreover, the undergraduate 3MT competition would give participating students an opportunity to practice valuable presenting skills, and give audience members and participants alike the chance to discover the research interests of their fellow undergraduate students.
Although this is the first year that U of T will host this competition at the undergraduate level, Bareau said that the competition has a lot of potential for growth over the next couple of years, “multiple departments, student groups, and student resources have shown interest in sponsorship and collaboration which will allow us to raise awareness about the event to an even larger number and wider variety of student researchers.”
This year’s competition will be a great start to a soon-to-be-annual event which promotes interdisciplinary interaction among students. The event will be held on Sunday March 30, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
Jasleen Arneja is a Varsity staff writer and an organizer of the 3MT competition.
