Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.— A graduate student in Mississippi State’s College of Veterinary Medicine is competing March 4-5 in the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Three Minute Thesis Regional Finals in Annapolis, Maryland.
Caitlin J. Wenzel, a master’s student studying veterinary medical science, was named Grand Champion of MSU’s fourth annual Three Minute Thesis Competition last November. Her research talk, “Magnesium Sulfate: A Rescue for Horse & Human Asthmatics,” earned a $1,000 prize.
Originally from Marinette, Wisconsin, Wenzel holds a bachelor's in animal and dairy sciences from MSU. She also was a member of the university's softball team from 2011-12.
Based on her research findings, Wenzel concluded that “magnesium sulfate is effective as a monotherapy, and there is strong rationale for its implementation into the emergency asthma therapies and treatments for both horse and human asthmatics.”
Developed by the University of Queensland, Australia, the 3MT competition develops graduate students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills by challenging them to convey their months or years of complex research in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience and in less than three minutes.
Open to all graduate students in good academic standing, the campus 3MT competition is sponsored annually by MSU’s Graduate School. Students may compete in arts and humanities; life and biomedical sciences and engineering;
physical, mathematical, computational sciences and engineering;
or social and behavioral sciences.
The MSU Department of Communication partners with the Graduate School to offer training programs to help students prepare for the competition, for which they can only use one accompanying static PowerPoint slide.
MSU’s Graduate School seeks to provide students with opportunities to develop methods of independent and systematic investigation, and provides students and faculty with an environment conducive to learning, scholarly activities and professional development. For more, visit www.grad.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.