On March 7, 2020, UT Austin Ph.D. student Daniel Thomas won the people’s choice award at the regional Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (CSGS) meeting in Birmingham, Ala.
Thomas, a curriculum and instruction student in the College of Education, was one of 52 individuals competing at the event. He advanced to the regional competition after winning first prize in the UT Austin 3MT competition in October 2019 for his presentation, “Black Male Teachers Entangled in Pathology.”
3MT is an international contest that challenges graduate students to summarize their research within three minutes to a general audience. The University of Queensland developed the contest in 2008 to help graduate students improve their oral communication skills.
Universities that are CSGS members each enter one student to compete at the event. The people’s choice award provides a $250 award.
Thomas took time to answer questions about his experience competing in 3MT and his research.
Why did you decide to participate in 3MT?
This past fall semester, I was fortunate to take a graduate class taught by Dr. Daina Berry called Research in African American History. Knowing that many of the students in her class were working on doctoral degrees, Dr. Berry incorporated relevant forms of professional development into her syllabus that would be beneficial for graduate students.
Luckily for me, creating a pitch and competing in the UT Three Minute Thesis was one of those requirements. During her tenure as a professor, Dr. Berry explained how she noticed that many graduate students struggled to generate a cogent response when met with simple conversation inquiries like, “So, what is your area of research?” or “Tell me about your dissertation topic.”
I followed the 3MT guidelines to present my topic in class, and Dr. Berry provided immediate feedback. After this assignment, I was completely confident in my ability compete in any 3MT competition.
How does participating in 3MT benefit graduate students?
There are many benefits to participating in 3MT, and two points stand out as particularly significant based on my experience.
First, 3MT challenges you to answer the question, “Why does what you do matter?” In answering this question, you need to communicate the technical or theoretical essence of your research in addition to its benefits to your field and society at-large without sounding like a dense peer-reviewed article or a lecture. 3MT presents you with the tasks of articulating why your research matters in a way that is captivating, awe-inspiring and done within three minutes.
The second benefit comes after you have accomplished this and people respond. As researchers, we want our work to have a positive impact on people, but we rarely get to see the impact that our work has on individuals.
After the 3MT event at UT, a young woman ran me down outside just tell me how much she enjoyed my talk and how it resonated with her. At Birmingham regionals, an Alabama high school principal shook my hand and stressed how much my talk touched her heart. I think being able to meet the challenge of the task presented by 3MT and then having that human interaction after the fact are the greatest benefits.
What are you researching for your dissertation?
From the early to mid-20th century, social scientists and politicians produced misleading studies that were racially biased and ahistorical and that described Black people who lived in inner-cities as problematic people with dysfunctional families due to absent fathers.
This research has created a false narrative that these families produced bad black boys who became problems in school that needed to be dealt with. As a result, society has been conditioned to see that the only purpose or value of Black male teachers is in their ability to discipline or serve as father-like role models for Black boys who have been constructed as bad and in need of saving.
My dissertation seeks to reconstruct this narrative of Black male teachers by disentangling them from these pathological concepts.
What are some recent research projects you worked on?
There are two research projects I have been working on for a while that have been accepted and will be published soon.
The first is an article I co-authored with my advisor, Dr. Anthony Brown, in UT’s College of Education. It is titled “A Critical Essay on Black Male Teacher Retention Discourses.” This paper critically analyzes the way public discourse draws on pathological research to inform the need for more Black male teachers.
The second is my first first-authored publication called “The Illusion of Opportunity: A Case of African American Student-Athletes Experiences in a Catholic High School,” which offers insight on the singular recruitment of Black males to predominantly white high schools for athletics.
What were some of the challenges you faced in communicating your research in this format?
The biggest challenge for me was choosing what to leave out. As researchers, we feel like every single story, statistic and figure is essential. I am a qualitative researcher, so I am always concerned with making sure that I tell the most complete narrative possible. Finding that point where I felt like I was telling as complete a story as possible while constantly cutting things out to fit within three minutes was definitely the hardest part.
How did the 3MT regional competition differ from the UT Austin competition?
At the UT Austin competition, there seemed to be a greater sense of comradery since some people knew each other from class or were just a familiar face around campus. At the regional competition, people were still nice, but it was easy to see that the other graduate students came with a competitive edge and a desire to win.
In the finals, all eight competitors presented flawlessly in front of an audience of about 200, which was much larger than the UT competition.
What did you learn about communicating academic research through the process of the 3MT competitions?
When the other finalist and I presented in the 3MT regional competition, I noticed a common thread about how all of us communicated our academic research. Every single person successfully appealed to human sentiment through storytelling as an entry point to the more complex aspects of their research.
In a sense, the best presenters tugged at your heart and made you care before they even engaged deeper aspects of their research.
What are your plans after you complete your Ph.D. program next spring?
I am really driven by my purposes for teaching and engaging the type of research questions that I currently address, so I plan on pursuing a faculty position as a professor within an education program where I can continue to engage in this work.