A thin tension hangs backstage at the Skirball Center. In the green room, students sit under posters of previous shows, their hands clasped to keep their fingertips still. Down the hall, a student chugs water from a plastic cup, then gives a little jump to let out the jitters. Another is tucked in a stairwell, rehearsing with small gestures and paces.

Suddenly, the room erupts in activity. A trio of students huddles around a phone to watch “Epic Rap Battle,” a two-minute and 36-second long video in which a faux Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking hurl mildly mocking verses at each other. Hawking lays the smack down with lines like “I’ll be stretching out the rhyme, like gravity stretches time.” An apt viewing choice, given the task at hand. The dozen students waiting backstage are finalists in the first ever New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science Threesis. Like the science icons in the video, they are about to participate in a battle of intellectual wits. Soon, each competitor will present a three-minute explanation of his or her thesis using clear and colloquial language that three interdisciplinary judges, and about 150 audience members, should understand. Their only assistance? A single, static slide. Inspired by a similar competition in Australia and intended to showcase GSAS master’s students and their thesis projects, the contest also sharpens the competitor's communication skills. “It’s an exercise that blends all the good things: the research accomplishments and the ability to communicate a good idea,” says GSAS Acting Dean Malcolm Semple, who is also Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology.

Road to the Finals

Erica Adams, Department of Politics

Every discipline has its lingo, the words and phrases that, over the course of study, become second nature. An English student might talk about critical tropes while a biologist casually refers to morphology. A shared vocabulary coalesces the community and, more practically, provides a shorthand for complex concepts. Yet the Threesis competitors, who were told to use language that would be accessible to an academic but non-specialized audience, could not lean on disciplinary jargon. Thus, the very thing that would make it easy to distill months of research into a scant three-minute presentation was off-limits.

The students’ preparation began when hopefuls from departments across GSAS applied in December. Most moved on to the next round, a mentoring session with a panel including David Giovanella, Master’s College Director, Suzanne Collado, Master’s College Programming Coordinator, an NYU subject librarian and a doctoral candidate. During these sessions, students got their first taste of the challenges ahead.

The mentors addressed language and more. Feedback ran the gamut from “You could set up your thesis better at the start” to “You sway when you talk.” They told politics student Erica Adams, whose research focuses on modernizing voter registration, that the 2008 ACORN scandal might be too obscure an example. “I thought it would be something that would be remembered,” she said. “The fact that it didn’t stick hadn’t quite occurred to me.” After the mentoring sessions, the competitors spent several weeks polishing their presentations. Adams says she tweaked her slide by adding “a few more compelling details and bullet points.”

On competition day, thirty students spent the morning at the Waverly Building , where they were split into four groups and faced their first round of competition. The judges in each room selected their top three competitors—the dozen finalists who were waiting nervously backstage at Skirball.

Let the Games Begin

The judges: Dalton Conley, Senior Vice Provost and Dean for the Social Sciences (left);
Catharine Stimpson, Dean Emerita (center); Carol Mandel, Dean of the Division of Libraries (right)

The final round of competition gets underway with Latin and Caribbean Studies student Lee Ann Evans. She launches into a compelling presentation, unraveling the shadow life of undocumented Dominicans in the Dominican Republic. They can’t attend secondary school, nor can they vote. The tough citizenship laws, she explains, are meant to keep Haitian immigrants from gaining rights, but have a similar effect on low-income, rural, or otherwise marginalized Dominicans, which only enhances already existent rifts between the two groups. In less than three minutes, she’s made sense of the enigmatic thesis title on her slide: “Undocumented and Dominican in the Dominican Republic: A Paradox of Identity, Sovereignty and Citizenship.”

Student after student proves that it is possible to keep an audience engaged while discussing complicated ideas. Kyle Munkittrick from the Bioethics program gives a provocative presentation in support of genetic enhancement. Museum Studies student Jailee Rychen, who has a casual confidence, questions the radical nature of the avant-garde French art group, the Situationist International. Jeremy Bold, a European and Mediterranean Studies student, asks the audience to rethink its understanding of nihilism.

Perhaps most impressive is the way the finalists hold up to the judges’ rigorous questioning. Dean Emerita Catharine Stimpson, Dean of the Division of Libraries Carol Mandel, and Senior Vice Provost and Dean for the Social Sciences Dalton Conley prove their academic mettle with incisive and probing inquiries. Stimpson’s questions are particularly striking in their combination of creativity and curiosity. “If we had a group of Situationists in the audience, what would they be doing?” she asks Rychen. “They would be telling me that Situationist International doesn’t exist, never existed and there’s no way I can write about it,” Rychen responds without a moment’s hesitation.

Jailee Rychen, Museum Studies Program

But Rychen did write about it—and her lucid explanation of that research won her first place at the Threesis. In fact, the presentations were so strong that the judges couldn’t select a single winner. Rychen tied for first with Bold (they each won $1000), while Adams was named runner-up and the audience favorite (winning $750 for each).

Many of the Threesis competitors are nearing graduation and Semple believes that the skills they honed during the challenge will be invaluable in their future endeavors. Some graduates will choose to pursue doctoral degrees. Others will begin their careers and will need to be able to communicate with people outside of their disciplines. “The Graduate School has to take the lead,” Semple said after the competition. “Whether students have goals in or outside the academy, we want to prepare them to be successful.”

> Inaugural GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge winners