CCU graduate students hone research skills in inaugural Three Minute Thesis competition
Six graduate students participated in CCU’s competition held Jan. 19, which was sponsored by the Office of Research and the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies.
The winner of the competition was Kristy Floyd, a CCU doctoral candidate in the Spadoni College of Education and Social Sciences and a science teacher at Horry County Schools Early College High School. She will receive $400 in funding and compete in the regional 3MT competition at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools’ annual meeting this March in Tampa, Fla. Floyd’s trip will be sponsored by the Office of Research and the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies.
“I am excited and honored to be the winner of CCU’s inaugural 3MT competition and to represent our outstanding University at the upcoming regional competition,” Floyd said. “I would like to thank Drs. [Nicholas] Pritchard and [Benjamin] Parker, and especially my chair, Dr. [Suzanne] Horn, for their guidance and support in my research.”
Floyd’s presentation, titled “Professional Capital, Adaptability, and Job Satisfaction,” made quite an impression on Lee Brown, Ph.D., dean of CCU’s College of Graduate and Continuing Studies.
“I felt like I was listening to the next superintendent for the South Carolina Department of Education,” said Brown. “She took a more holistic approach by researching teacher job satisfaction, going beyond just teacher’s pay, to address a major issue in education today.”
3MT is an academic research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland, Australia, in which graduate students present a thesis in three minutes or less with the help of nothing more than a single PowerPoint slide. It challenges the students to effectively explain their research in three minutes to a non-specialist audience.