Sowmya Ramapatruni, UMBC

11:00-12:00 Monday 26 March, 2018, ITE346, UMBC

The March for Our Lives protest, organized by survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting to raise awareness and support for gun control, gathered an estimated crowd of 800,000 in D.C. in addition to over 700 sibling marches held around the world.

The event, which took place on Saturday, March 24, has been in the works since mid-February, shortly after a shooting took place at a high school in Parkland, Florida, leaving 17 dead and 20 injured. Since the beginning of 2018, there have been 17 accounts of gun violence in schools, creating a public outcry for gun control in the U.S.

Seventeen teenagers affected by gun violence spoke at the event on Saturday, including MSD students Sara Chadwick, Cameron Kasky, Delaney Tarr, Alex Wind and Emma Gonzalez. Each student during the event emphasized the importance of youth votes and eradicating the influence of the National Rifle Association, a pro-gun advocacy and lobbying group, funding in government.

Chadwick opened up her speech by dividing the 3.3 million dollars U.S. Senator Marco Rubio received from the NRA by public school students in Florida, his state. It amounted to $1.05 per student, which priced the 17 lives lost on Feb. 14 at $17.85.

“Is that our worth to politicians, $1.05? Was $17.85 all it cost you that day, Mr. Rubio?” asked Chadwick. “Well, I say one life is worth more than all the guns in America.”

Hogg echoed Chadwick’s statements, starting his speech by tying a $1.05 price tag to the podium mike. “We’re going to make this the voting issue, we’re going to take this to every election to every state, in every city,” said Hogg.

“When people try to suppress your vote, and there are people who stand against you because you are too young, we say no more,” he continued.

González focused more on the event itself, and opened her speech on how long the shooting lasted: “Six minutes and about 20 seconds; in a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone, in the Douglas community was forever altered.” She named each person killed in the massacre, followed by a vigil of silence.

“Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and twenty seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with students as they escape and walk free for an hour for arrest. Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job,” said González before exiting the stage.

Multiple MSD alumni groups organized to march in D.C., including students who graduated as recently as 2017. Philip, from the graduating class of 2016 and student at UCF, traveled to D.C. with friends and fellow MSD grads.

“Well, It was more like a nightmare when we first found out, but seeing the support and everything was definitely really awesome,” said Philip, who had been on the swim team with a victim from the shooting, Nicholas Dworet. The graduates had known several of the student activists speaking, as well as those murdered, and described the shooting and events following as surreal.

Another student, Ian, a current University of Florida student who hails from Parkland, stated, “I know some of those people on stage, but I know them as kids; that’s what they actually are, they’re teenagers. And to just see them given a role and given a platform that they don’t — they shouldn’t have to have…it should be the adults twenty years ago, it should be the adults five years ago at Sandy Hook — there’s so many opportunities that we’ve had to make this [gun violence] less of an issue, and the fact that it had to happen on our soil, that our kids had to make something happen about this, is ridiculous.”

The alumni group unanimously agreed that the horror of the event brought them and the greater Parkland community closer, and incites pride in their hometown as students rally for change. All of the students plan to vote in the upcoming elections, and believe that relevant change can and will be made following the protests.

UMBC’s 40th Graduate Research Conference, hosted by the Graduate Student Association on March 28, 2018, will give master’s and Ph.D. students a chance to share their work, receive constructive criticism on their communication skills, and connect with researchers from all corners of the university. This year’s conference will also include talks from Carole McCann, professor and chair of gender and women’s studies, and Taka Yamashita, professor of sociology and gerontology, on the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as a special presentation by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

“A major part of the experience as a grad student is to create new knowledge or new modes of creative expression, and to write the best possible thesis or dissertation,” says Jeffrey Halverson, associate dean of UMBC’s Graduate School. As a complement to the research itself, he explains, “the Graduate School also wants to emphasize practicing and honing one’s ‘soft skills’—that is, communicating your results, finding interdisciplinary crossroads to explore, and taking advantage of professional development opportunities.” 

Students will present more than 50 posters and give 20 short talks. Four panels—focused on health, machines, global issues, and communities—will allow graduate researchers to share their work in an interdisciplinary context. All students who present posters or give talks receive feedback from faculty judges on their presentation strengths and how they might more effectively share their work with different audiences in the future.

Lipi Mukherjee, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in atmospheric physics, is participating in the GRC for the second time. The first time, she benefited from both presenting a poster and observing other students’ talks. “It showed me what a good talk looks like, and how you can take advantage of a platform like GRC,” she shares. Her advice? “Take it seriously. It can be your first step in developing your presentation skills, and it is a very unintimidating environment.”

Juan Valdez ‘12, biological sciences, M.S. ‘13, applied molecular biology, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in biological sciences, and a prior GRC participant, agrees. “Any sort of practice in presentation is super valuable,” he says. UMBC’s applied molecular biology master’s program and Bridge to the Doctorate program both required Valdez to present, and he’s glad they did. He says it was scary at first, but he’s seen huge improvements in his presentation skills based on honest feedback from the judges. To uncertain grad students considering presenting, he says, “Just do it.”

Graduate students who are close to completing their degrees may also participate in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. In the 3MT contest, which began at the University of Queensland in 2008 and now is held at over 200 universities worldwide, graduate students are challenged to present a three-minute talk encapsulating their entire dissertation. The winners continue on to a national competition.

“I think my research is really cool, but sometimes I struggle with trying to explain to people what I do,” says Alex Rittle, a third-year Ph.D. student in geography and environmental systems and a member of the GRC planning committee. “3MT is basically practicing your elevator speech. How do you distill everything you’re doing—which is going to be hundreds of pages of a dissertation—into three minutes? It helps me think about the essence of what I’m doing.”

This year, 3MT participants have had the opportunity to prepare for their talks one-on-one with Scott Morgan, a communication skills expert. After reading Morgan’s book, Mustafa Al-Adhami, M.S. ‘15 and a second-year Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, was excited for the opportunity to work with him and hone his 3MT presentation. Al-Adhami, who is a budding entrepreneur, notes that “this is how it works in real life—you don’t get much time to present your idea, so I thought the 3MT would be good practice for the future.”

Last year’s 3MT winner, Denise Williams, a third-year Ph.D. student in chemistry, emphasizes that beyond the value of presenting her own work, she’s particularly enjoyed the opportunity to connect with graduate students working in vastly different fields, whom she wouldn’t just run into in the lab or the classroom.

Morgan Bunting, a gerontology Ph.D. student and member of the GRC planning committee, agrees. “GRC gives graduate students training on how to ace professional conferences in the field, and by participating, students practice how to communicate their research in an accessible way,” she says. “It’s also just a wonderful way to engage the community and learn what amazing work is going on in the Graduate School.”

Learn more about this year’s program on the research conference website.

Image: Ashley Wayne Thomas, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, discusses her research with a fellow student at GRC 2017. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.