Spanish Pedagogy MA student Fernanda Zamora won $500 and a chance to compete in the university-wide Three Minute Thesis competition.
PROVO, Utah (February 27, 2020)—The College of Humanities’ eighth-annual Three Minute Thesis competition provided eight graduate students an opportunity to present their research in front of a panel of judges for a chance to win $500. The caveat? Just as the competition’s title suggests, presentations were strictly limited to only three minutes.
The competition’s winner, Fernanda Zamora, gave a presentation titled, “Special Needs Students: Can They Learn a Foreign Language?” A Spanish Pedagogy student, her exposition was the culmination of extensive research on the abilities of mentally disabled youth to develop foreign language skills.
“When I was in Mexico, I had a chance to do a thesis regarding students with special needs,” explained Zamora. “I had so much information that I had to put in three minutes. It was hard, but it helped me a lot to see the main objectives of my research.”
What the presentations may have lacked in length was compensated by outstanding quality and depth in research. Topics ranged from studies of adolescent development in 18th-century literature to ancient perspectives applied to our current refugee crisis.
The runner-up, Linguistics student Barret Hamp, devoted his thesis to the study of an individual suffix in the Kichwa language, as spoken in Ecuador’s Pastaza province. The third-place winner was Rebecca Cazanave, a Creative Writing student, whose presentation, “Write What You Know, Right?” urged authors to venture beyond their field of expertise.
Presenters were allowed one single slide to be displayed behind them and nothing more. No other props, electronic media, or items were permitted, and the three-minute limit was enforced. Judges evaluated the presenters on a basis of comprehension and content, engagement, and communication, and awarded the clearest, most alluring presentations accordingly.
The Three Minute Thesis competition originated in 2008 at the University of Queensland and BYU’s College of Humanities hosted its first edition of the event in 2013. A university-wide competition will be held on March 12 at 11:00 AM in the Wilkinson Student Center Varsity Theater, where Zamora and winners from other colleges around the university will compete for a $2,000 prize.
—Samuel Benson (Sociology, ’23)