CSU graduate student Bayley Wade presents at the Colorado Council of Graduate Schools Three-Minute Talk Competition.
Mentors are sharpening the communication skills of Colorado State University graduate students through interdisciplinary experiences and professional development opportunities.
Creating opportunities that build new interdisciplinary relationships and support high-quality communication skills and mentoring practices among faculty, graduate students and collaborative teams at CSU is a priority for Kristina Quynn, assistant dean of the Graduate School and director of CSU Writes.
Enhancing communication skills for long-term success
In March, Quynn designed and piloted a cohort training program for the Graduate School’s first Three-Minute Talk Competition, bringing together more than a dozen graduate students from ten departments and programs to help them work in smaller cohorts to refine their thesis talks and slides for competition. Students invited to participate in the competition were awardees from the Graduate Student Showcase on Nov. 16.
The pilot program was co-run by Quynn and Megan Brice, a graduate coordinator in the Department of Computer Science. Graduate students were required to commit to weekly practice and review sessions and to provide feedback to improve each other’s presentations — meaning they would be both colleagues and competitors. Quynn aligned the training with methods demonstrated to be successful through her CSU Writes programming. The Department of Health and Exercise Science, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Department Occupational Therapy students were top performers.
Quynn plans to continue training other mentors to support future competitions. These mentors will work to combine a supportive, but competitive environment, with interdisciplinary interactions as a best practice for helping students successfully communicate with a broad audience.
“Training and competition paired with collegial feedback support a healthy and successful academic community,” said Quynn. “It can be challenging to create a space of trust and empathy where researchers can share and receive feedback openly about their work and presentations. However, stretching oneself in this way leads to the adoption of strong communication skills that will serve graduate students for a lifetime.”
Consistent, community sourced training
Quynn points to recent successes by Bayley Wade, a master’s student in the Department of Health and Exercise Science as an example of how exceptional mentoring support from faculty and students across disciplines is a catalyst for success.
Wade took top honors in the statewide Colorado Council of Graduate Schools Three-Minute Talk Competition. She was nominated based on her winning presentations at CSU’s Graduate Student Showcase, the College of Health and Human Sciences Research Day, and the Graduate School’s pilot 3MT™ style challenge.
Wade credits many people, including her advisor, Brett Fling, for challenging her to succeed in recent competitions.
“I have the best advisor and lab, and my training in the Sensorimotor and Neuroimaging Lab has been invaluable to my communication skills development. Chris Patrick, my lab mate, develops the most creative presenting exercises which Dr. Fling welcomes enthusiastically,” said Wade.
Wade has taken advantage of mentor support during recent competitions to polish her storytelling technique of developing patient personas to better engage her audience. She expresses gratitude for the mentoring she received from Quynn and the experiences gained through competitions hosted at CSU.
“The most valuable part of participating in the Graduate School’s 3MT professional development training program was learning how to condense my thesis work and effectively communicate complex ideas in a concise and compelling way that is accessible to a non-specialist audience,” said Wade. “This experience has been such a bright spot in my time at CSU.”
Quynn added: “We are thrilled to have Bayley’s exceptional work and communication skills recognized. Bayley is wonderfully humble, reminding us that her advisor, her lab mates, graduate colleagues and judges have contributed to her journey.”
It takes a community to communicate research well.
“Bailey reminds me of an Olympic athlete who makes science communication look easy, but the hours of practice and hard work remain hidden behind the scenes,” said Quynn. “Fling’s Sensorimotor Neuroimaging Laboratory models how to value communication, trust, and relationship building.”
As Quynn points out, Bayley’s advisor and mentor takes an approach that has demonstrated success for many of his students.
“I use a holistic approach to solicit multiple rounds of feedback from folks at the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels to ensure their delivery is understandable and impactful to a broad variety of educational backgrounds,” said Fling.
Interdisciplinary competition at Graduate Student Showcase
Quynn (left) and Wade at the Colorado Council of Graduate Schools Three-Minute Talk Competition.
Quynn and Fling agree that the Graduate Student Showcase, known colloquially as the GradShow, is an important opportunity for mentors and peers to support each other’s professional development.
“At the statewide competition, we heard from multiple graduate student participants about their yearning for more opportunities to come together across disciplines and universities to discuss and learn about all types of research happening across the broad spectrum that encompasses science,” said Fling.
Each fall, the Graduate School hosts the Graduate Student Showcase to provide a venue for graduate students in all programs to showcase their graduate work. During the showcase, students explain their work within three minutes while practicing techniques that enhance their abilities to effectively communicate their work to broad audiences. The entire campus community is invited to attend, learn, and provide feedback when relevant.
“The GradShow is one of the essential ways we create a cross-campus community for sharing our research, scholarly, and creative work,” said Quynn. “Such sharing is crucial to the well-being of our campus community as we facilitate communications excellence.”
The Graduate School will partner with the Office of the Vice President for Research in 2023-24 to host another 3MT™ style training and competition.
