For the last 3 years, the NUS Graduate School (NUSGS) and the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC) have collaborated on preparing NUS graduate students to excel in the international 3MT® (Three-Minute Thesis) competitions. The 3MT® competition celebrates research conducted by Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) students. 3MT® strengthens students’ academic presentation skills by developing their ability to explain their research to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes. This training, spearheaded by R. Rashid from the NUSGS and J. Banta from CELC, was revamped in 2022. The training regimen involves two interactive workshops and a series of individual consultations with CELC faculty to work on both the presentation script and video.

In 2022, Rashid and Banta presented their training plan at the Higher Education Campus Conference, “The Art of the Fast Pitch: Presenting Research in 3 Minutes,” and won the award for Best Paper Presentation. Since this redesign, NUS graduate students have placed highly in international rankings each year, with an NUS winner, Seow Wei Lun, at the 2023 Universititas21 Global Competition.

In the University of Queensland 3MT Asia Pacific Final, an NUS student, Francesca Picucci, placed in the finalist round. The 3MT® competition is quickly becoming a benchmark for graduate educational excellence, especially in Asia and Southeast Asia. The collaboration between NUSGS and CELC has positioned NUS as a leader in preparing the next generation of researchers for success.