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Graduate School

The return of Three Minute Thesis

An 80,000-word thesis would take nine hours to present. Their time limit: three minutes.

The Graduate School is excited to announce the 2017 Three Minute Thesis Competition and invites you to attend the final competition.

Three winners
2016 K-State winners, Ryan Schmid, Bondy Kaye and Jere Noel.

Graduate students will have the opportunity to present their thesis or dissertations to the community in three minutes or less on February 8 and 16.

Last year’s winners, Ryan Schmid, Bondy Kaye and Jere Noel walked away with monetary awards, sponsored by the Office of Vice President for Research and the University Distinguished Professors Group.

Alumni are invited to come back to campus to witness the final competition on February 16 at 5:30 p.m. in the Alumni Center Banquet Room. The judges for the competition will be Bill Snyder, Tom Giller, and Usha Reddi.

Preliminary competitions, or heats, will be held on February 8. Top presenters from each heat will be selected by judges to move forward and compete in the final competition on February 16. From the final competition, a judging panel will select the top two presenters, and a people’s choice award winner will be selected by the audience. The first place presenter will represent K-State at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) 3MT® Competition in April.

The goal of 3MT is to celebrate the discoveries made by research students and develop their academic, presentation and research communication skills. The competition focuses on the students’ ability to communicate the importance of their research to the broader community.

The 3MT, first conducted at The University of Queensland in 2008, is an academic competition that challenges graduate students to present a compelling oration on their thesis/dissertation topic and its significance in only three minutes using just one PowerPoint slide.

Learn more about Kansas State University’s Three Minute Thesis Competition.