This year the University of Otago’s Pacific Islands Research & Student Support Unit (PIRSSU) developed a unique competition to encourage students to visualise themselves as future health researchers, with "stories to tell and passion to burn". Rosalina Richards (Associate Dean Pacific, Dunedin School of Medicine), Malia Lameta (PIRSSU Programmes Coordinator), and Brad Watson (PIRSSU Programmes Manager) explain more.
One of the key goals of the University of Otago’s Pacific Strategic Framework is to develop and support Pacific research excellence. The first objective in this pathway is to expand our Pacific health research workforce, with the HRC providing invaluable support for students’ progression through summer studentships, postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships.
To that end, a challenge for us here at PIRSSU has been to get students to join the start of that pipeline. PIRSSU chose to do something to provide a taste of how rewarding research can be. It needed to fit within a busy study workload and, ideally, provide a platform for students to apply for summer studentships. From this, the My Pitch is Perfect (MPIP) Pacific Research Competition was born.
MPIP focuses on the research development process, where you don’t have all the answers, just compelling questions. Taking inspiration from The Amazing Race and Dragons' Den, students were given just 48 hours to pose their research question, develop a research proposal and come up with a creative and compelling ‘pitch’ for their idea (summarised in a two-page submission and five-minute presentation).
The presentation could take any form of interpretation students felt comfortable with. The styles of presentation were varied and ranged from a traditional PowerPoint talk, to role play, spoken word, singing, and stand-up comedy. The overall winner, Theresa Fitzpatrick, was chosen for her highly original and excellently communicated research proposal, plus her outstanding creativity.
MPIP aimed to reinforce the ideas that research is exciting and that we all have the potential to contribute. In addition to a very enjoyable event, the team were thrilled to see progress towards our goal of engaging more students in research opportunities, with a substantial increase in HRC Pacific Summer Studentship applications from our University of Otago students in 2015.