UH Mānoa hosts Three-Minute Thesis competition

Graduate students representing different programs across the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa will compete in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition on Saturday, April 27, 2019. The event will be held in UH Mānoa’s  Shidler Business Administration complex with the preliminary round beginning at 2 p.m.

This event, started in 2008 by The University of Queensland, is now held at more than 600 universities around the world in more than 65 countries. UH Mānoa Graduate Division Dean Krystyna Aune, brought this competition to campus to give graduate students an opportunity to further develop their communication skills and share their research with the campus and public.

More than 50 students will participate in the UH Mānoa 3MT this year.

Graduate students must explain their master’s or doctoral research in three minutes or less, with the aid of only a single PowerPoint slide. This is quite a challenge considering it would take a person two hours to read out loud an average master’s thesis manuscript and about six and a half hours to read out loud an average doctoral dissertation manuscript. Participants are evaluated on their ability to convey the gist of their research questions and results in a manner that is understandable and engaging to an intelligent, but non-specialist audience, while avoiding trivializing their research.

Dean Aune emphasized that, “This event helps us all realize that the research conducted by our graduate students across fields is critical to fulfilling the mission of our research university.”

For more information on this event, go to:

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/graduate/content/three-minute-thesis-3mt-competition-2019