Lakehead University's Orillia campus is hosting the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) final for Ontario graduate students today.
The competition brought more than 20 university students from across the province to the University Avenue campus today. Each student had just three minutes to present their research project to peers and adjudicators. It was the first time Lakehead's Orillia campus hosted the event.
Linda Rodenburg, the interim principal of the Orillia campus, says graduate students bring important components to university campuses.
"They're a really important part of our culture of innovation," she said. "I think this showcase just shows that Lakehead graduate students and the Lakehead graduate student community are also an important and central community within the larger grad student population in Ontario."
Dr. Chander Shahi, the dean of the faculty of graduate studies, says the 3MT competition originally began in Australia.
"It has spread to all over the world," he said. "After this provincial competition, we'll have the national competition where we'll pick up the winner who will go on to represent us in the international competition."
Shahi says he's enjoyed spending the day with university students and staff from across the province today.
"We're very proud to host it because we want to give a boost to graduate education in local university," he said.
There are about 1,800 graduate students at Lakehead University between the Thunder Bay and Orillia campuses.
"Orillia has been a main attraction for graduate students," Shahi said.
Rodenburg says visiting students have enjoyed the "warm" environment in Orillia today.
"They love the community," she said. "I think that there's something really special about Lakehead in Orillia and we are feeling that as part of this competition."
Lakehead students were excited to share their ideas with a diverse audience on Tuesday morning, Rodenburg said.
"I think the key to this competition is that they are presenting their research in a way that is accessible to all people," she said. "That is a really important thing for graduate students to learn to do."
Students have been preparing to present their ideas at Lakehead University for the past six months.
"The solutions to the big, real-world problems we have today often come from the work of graduate students," Rodenburg said. "This is very important for the professional development of regular students and the entire research culture of the province," Shahi added.
Madeline Fabiano is a Master of Science and Kinesiology student at Lakehead University. On Tuesday morning she presented her SHINE Program thesis which fosters physical activity among female undergraduate students.
"As a female myself and an undergraduate student as of last year, I would go to the gym and, suddenly after COVID, notice that there weren't as many females there anymore," she explained. "So, I created my honours thesis based on this to try to identify what were the barriers and facilitators to physical activity engagement for females within the gym."
Fabiano identified that a lot of female students didn't feel comfortable returning to the gym and because of the pandemic, they lacked the knowledge to engage in physical activity. Presenting her ideas in 180 seconds was challenging, she admitted..
"It's challenging to try to make sure you have all your wording in there and all the important parts," she said. "I really had to make sure that it's in lay terms so that everybody can understand because not everyone knows about female undergraduate students’ physical activity levels."
Fabiano, who started preparing her presentation in December, has been going over her speech multiple times a day since February. She says finally presenting her ideas was nerve-wracking.
"I was among the best of the best in Ontario," she said. "It was a super fun experience. I like public speaking and sharing my research and hearing about others was really cool."
Being a part of 3MT today gave Fabiano a new sense of confidence.
"It really gave me the ability to share my research and to inform others about what's going on," she said "It helped me improve my public speaking and my presentation skills."
Fabiano finished in third place. The winner was Julia Tropk of Queen's University for her presentation, "Bacteria: Friend or foe?" Jordan Carrillo Zurita of Toronto Metropolitan University finished second for his presentation, "Building better processed foods, block by block."
