Graduate students enter Three Minute Thesis competition to prepare for final dissertation

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After working on a paper until 2 a.m. the previous night, graduate student Joy Nyokabi Karinge presented her thesis to a captive audience in Bird Library as part of its Three Minute Thesis competition. She sees the competition as an opportunity to practice explaining her research, because she will be defending her thesis next week.

“If it’s something that is important to you, if it’s something that you really want to do, then you will make time for it,” Nyokabi Karinge said.

Despite their packed schedules, graduate students participate in Three Minute Thesis to hone their communication skills and explain their research to the public. The program is largely targeted towards Ph.D. students working on dissertations, and requires participants to communicate their research, how they will be pursuing it and why it matters in plain speech — all in less than three minutes.

Glenn Wright initiated the Three Minute Thesis competition at Syracuse University nine years ago. As the executive director for professional and career development, he tries to organize programs to support graduate students in their work at SU and their transitions to the working world. When he heard about Three Minute Thesis competitions at other schools, he decided to start one at SU.

Wright said that students choose to add this competition to their difficult workloads because they understand the importance of research communication.

“It’s great to be able to describe your work to faculty and postdocs and other people who specialize in the same areas as you, but it’s also important to be able to describe what you’re doing to people who don’t have that background,” Wright said.

The winner of the Three Minute Thesis competition receives a laptop with an estimated worth $2500, and there is an additional “People’s Choice” award selected by the audience, Wright said. They will go on to represent SU at the next level of Three Minute Thesis competitions.

With titles as complicated as “Hydrophobicity of Novel Carbon-Based Surface in Extreme Conditions” and “The Elephant in the Room Has an Octopus Head: COVID-19 and Older Adults,” clarity is crucial. Without knowledge of technical terminology, the theses are impossible to understand.

SU alumnus Adam Cucchiara won the competition last year, and returned this year as a judge for the event. He said he enjoys hearing the new research and being exposed to fields outside of his own.

“It’s a lot of stress for the presenter,” Cucchiara said. “You want to make sure that you get all those nuggets of wisdom in there before the time ends.”

What made the competition worth it for Cucchiara was the opportunity to share his work with a broader audience outside of his coworkers. As a student in the Maxwell School, he wanted his research to impact more people than just those in the world of academia.

Cucchiara was able to represent SU in the regional competition, and although he didn’t win, he appreciated the opportunity to see research from all around the Northeast.

For non-participating audience members, the benefit of attending the competition is the chance to learn about current research in various areas presented for people with no background in the field, Wright said. It’s an opportunity to stay connected to the research happening at SU.

Nyokabi Karinge said that as the sole master’s student in the room of Ph.D. students, there is an additional benefit to the competition: she gets the chance to see what Ph.D. students are working on and how it compares to her own research.

Although her schedule is packed, Nyokabi Karinge said she felt that this opportunity was worth the time investment it would cost. She views the event as a tool, she said, not a task.

“I was just telling myself that I’ve done the research, I’ve written about it, I know it in my head. So I just have to say it in three minutes, and that’s it,” Nyokabi Karinge said.

Andrew Ridgeway compared scientific jargon and everyday speech as being two different languages, and said that the majority of his process was translation. As a fourth year Ph.D. student at Syracuse, he sees the Three Minute Thesis competition as an opportunity to practice explaining his research to people in a different field.

The competition forces researchers to create a successful “elevator pitch” of what they are working on, Ridgeway said. To make an impact and make the most of their work, communication skills are crucial.

“A lot of times, we’re working with very high-level or super technical concepts, but eventually, we’re going to have to go out into the world and interact with the public and explain our research to people so that we use what we’ve learned to make the world a better place,” Ridgeway said.

Ridgeway said he sees the competition as not an additional responsibility, but as an extension of the work he is already doing. Although he feels pressure from his busy workload, he feels that prioritizing this competition is worth it.

“I’m going on the job market next year, and I’m going to be explaining my research to a bunch of different audiences,” Ridgeway said. “So for me, this is kind of a warmup.”

He said that the most difficult aspect of the project is simply condensing his work. He said that competitors take a book-length research project and somehow transform it into a three minute speech without any field-specific jargon, which requires participants to cut a lot of content.

Mary Theresa Pagán said she decided to participate in the competition because she is close to doing her dissertation proposals, which require a thorough explanation of her research. She also viewed this as an opportunity for growth, rather than a burden.

Pagán also works full-time as a faculty member at SUNY Oswego. She said that she needs competitions and events like this to spur her on and motivate her in her work.

As a teacher, Pagán said that she speaks for a living, so condensing information is not a new process. She used a summary of her project that her dissertation advisor had her complete as the basis for her presentation, then worked on memorization.

Ultimately, Pagán is glad the program exists, because it does a service for the students.

“It’s a tool to motivate us to be able to explain our research and layman’s terms,” Pagán said. “If you can’t do that, you really don’t know what you’re researching.”