The Faculty of Arts hosted its fourth annual 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) heat on March 11 with 10 graduate students competing in a very close race.
"3MT is much more than a competition, or a chance to practice presentation skills; it is a remarkable opportunity to share your research with fellow students and faculty, and to generate a way of discussing your research in broad and relatable terms," says Kyle Gerber, PhD candidate in the Department of English and runner-up at the Arts heat.
3MT competitors show one static slide and may take no more than three minutes to present the breadth and significance of their graduate research to a panel of Arts judges comprised of faculty and staff.
This year, the research ranged from facial context and perceptions, to the rhetoric of Mennonite responses to tragedy, to resource extraction in hazardous waste production.
Kyle Gerber’s research considers stories of forgiveness in Mennonite communities. He references a 2006 school shooting in Pennsylvania that took the lives of 5 young Amish girls. What followed shocked the country. There were immediate offers of forgiveness extended from the families of the young girls to the family of the gunman. How could they issue forgiveness so quickly? Kyle explains that there are rhetorical practices in the Mennonite culture that informs their psyche and behaviour.
This year’s winner was a 3MT double-hitter. Elise Vist, a PhD candidate in the Department of English won the Faculty of Arts heat in 2014, and again this year. Her presentation on “Queer Fans and Intimate Fandoms” won judges over with its honest and insightful take on the power of storytelling and the subcultures that can emerge. She defines intimate fandoms as a small group of like-minded fans in online communities who counter the narratives accepted by a public fandom by building their own new reality that speaks to their own identities.
"I encourage all my students to participate in the 3MT," explains Aimée Morrison, Associate Professor in the Department of English and supervisor to winner Elise Vist. "For more senior students, it helps them whittle down more than 200 pages of finished writing into an 'elevator pitch' they can use whenever they talk about their research." Kyle adds: "I found the work of preparing and distilling my research into 3 meaningful minutes to be challenging, rewarding, and stimulating."
For more junior students just starting to conceptualize their projects, the 3MT competition really pushes them to clearly state just what it is they want to do and why it is important, explains Professor Morrison. "I nearly always tell my students to use their 3MT scripts in their thesis introductions."
Elise delivered a strong presentation at the University of Waterloo 3MT finals on Thursday, March 31. 18 finalists from the 6 faculties competed, and Gah-Jone Won (School of Optometry and Vision Science) took home the top prize for his presentation on “The Development of an Antibody-Drug Conjugate to Specifically Target and Soften the Crystalline Lens in vivo.” Gah-Jone will be representing the University of Waterloo at the provincial 3MT on Thursday, April 14 at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Full list of Arts 3MT presenters:
- Sara Aghakazemjourabbaf on “Optimal resource extraction with hazardous waste production and an environmental bond” – Department of Economics, supervised by Margaret Insley
- Vedran Dzebic on “Curio-Cities: Psychology of complex human environments” – Department of Psychology, supervised by Colin Ellard
- Kyle Gerber on “Figuring Forgiveness: Rhetorical patterns in Mennonite responses to tragedy” – Department of English, supervised by Randy Harris
- Lingyan Jin on “Gender difference of patent in U.S. from 1975 to 2010” – Department of Economics, supervised by Joel Blit
- Philip Miletic on “Only Connect: The virtual communities of Gertrude Stein and David Foster Wallace” – Department of English, supervised by Aimée Morrison
- Karisa Parkington on “Looking Eye to Eye: Facial context and featural fixation modulate early neural markers of face perception” – Department of Psychology, supervised by Roxanne Itier
- Meghan K. Riley on “’All We Really Know that We Have is the Flesh’” – Department of English, supervised by Victoria Lamont and Beth Coleman
- Masa Torbica on “Nation to Nation? Comparting decolonizing communication within the TRC and #IdleNoMore – Department of English, supervised by Heather Smyth
- Elise Vist on “Queer Fans and Intimate Fandoms” – Department of English, supervised by Aimée Morrison and Neil Randall
- Nick Zabara on “Trying to feel safe: Is it a trap (for socially anxious people)?” – Department of Psychology, supervised by David Moscovitch