The Graduate School sponsors the following programming events and initiatives to promote interactions among graduate students and campus community members in different disciplines.

GRAD Talks

GRAD Talks are short presentations that occur in an informal conversational setting and allow graduate students to present their research to the broader university community, or they might be presentations on professional development and other topics of interest. The Graduate School and the Kathryn A. Martin Library co-sponsor these events to foster interactions among faculty and grad students in disparate disciplines that could grow into meaningful new transdisciplinary collaborations. These events are held bi-weekly on Mondays in the Library Rotunda. Watch your email for announcements.

Fall 2024

• Contact the Grad Office at [email protected] if you would like to present a GRAD Talk. Students who received conference travel support funding from the Grad Office are especially encouraged to present. 

3MT at UMD

The 3-Minute Thesis (3MT®) is a research communication competition that challenges graduate students to communicate the significance of their independent projects without the use of props or industry jargon, in just three minutes. The exercise develops academic, presentation, and research communication skills and enhances the capacity of research students to explain their work to a non-specialist audience and to leave their audience wanting to know more.

The 2024 UMD campus-wide competition took place on October 21 from 1 - 3:15pm in Library 260. The campus winner, Rohith Sabu, went on to compete in the 2024 Systemwide contest which took place on Friday, November 15, 2024 on the Twin Cities campus, and won the Systemwide People's Choice Award! Watch his presentation here.

If you're interested in learning more about any of these initiatives, please contact the UMD Graduate School Office at [email protected] for more information.