About Us
Improving STEM outreach and connecting our community
Join our team
Partner with Us
Original Founders, 2017
Cansu Cetin, Ankan Choudhury, Dani Crain, Keighley Reisenauer
Our Story
Baylor Present Your PhD (PyPhD for short) is a graduate student organization with the vision to bring professional-level science into classrooms and the community. While the group title may say “PhD”, graduate students from various PhD and Masters science programs at Baylor University are involved. They give science presentations of all knowledge levels ranging from the basics of what science is and what it means to be a scientists all the way up to the advanced research they are doing in their program.
Since this group was founded, Baylor PyPhD has continued to grow from our handful of presentations and 4 founding members in our first months.
If you are interested in having Baylor PyPhD give a presentation at your school, community center, museum, library, venue, etc., you can learn more about the program from our Collaborators page or you can send us an Email for more information.
Are you a graduate student interested in joining PyPhD? You can learn more about the program from our Resources for Graduate Students or you can send us an Email for more information.
What We Do
Early Student Engagement
We know that many young students may not even know a scientist. So we designed a presentation to engage them in the process of thinking like a researcher and inspire their scientific minds!
Build Community Networks
PyPhD was founded with the mission to bridge the Waco and the Baylor communities. We do that by collaborating with dedicated educators, communicators, and locals alike.
Linking CUrriculum to Research
It can be hard to answer the “why do we have to know this?” question. We do our best to match our research to what you are teaching in the classroom or to students’ interests.
early Career Science Communication
We partner with our community to build better scientists in and out of the lab
Whether we are working with kindergartners or junior college students or with the general public, Present Your PhD always has one mission: empower people through the process of research. This can be by communicating our work in ways that engage and connect or by demonstrating that STEM can be a diverse and inclusive field, with far more options than pursuing medicine.
See our Presenters at Work
Our Mission & Approach
Education systems today are limited to structures that inhibit creative thinking, exploration, and lasting retention of ideas and concepts. Research shows that young learners must be engaged with the ability to motivate, inspire curiosity, and foster supportive environments to overcome obstacles to achieving positive attitudes about STEM research and related fields.
Furthermore, society endures a pervasive idea that it is possible – and easy – to separate and distill ideas presented in the media to reflect one’s personal beliefs. This confirmation bias then promotes the spread of misinformation and an inaccurate narrative about science. This is a major driver of the widespread lack of science comprehension among adults, resulting in general distrust.
We found and grew this graduate student-organized outreach mechanism to support community connection and the promotion of scientific literacy and inclusivity of learners of all ages. There is overwhelming support for the value of hands-on, interactive education and its positive influence on memory, retention, and educational impact, which is the basis of Present Your PhD’s work. For instance, negative outlooks at any age are reversible with efforts to demystify and personalize science via widespread programming, face-to-face interactions with scientists, and approachable science journalism
Our mission is to empower young learners, especially young women and underrepresented minorities, to envision themselves as future scientists and to inspire the community to envision themselves as driving partners of research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
People Reached
PyPhD has presented to people of all ages, but predominantly K-12 students. This number represents the efforts from our first two years of work.
Members
We started with four and have grown our numbers immensely! We are also fortunate to have members that have stuck with us semester after semester.
Minutes Presented
That is over 38 continuous hours! We average just over one person per minute presented — meaning we have high efficiency and are quickly spreading STEM outreach!
Collaborators
Without our Collaborators, PyPhD would not have reached this level of success. We are so thankful for our partnering groups and are always looking for more.
A word of thanks
We’d like to recognize and show our appreciation to UT for their support in helping us get started.
For more information on the original “Present Your PhD” group at UT Austin, visit their page here.
A Letter from our Supporters
As the Graduate Program Director and Faculty in the Biology department here at Baylor, I have had the privilege of working with graduate students directly and in overseeing their training program. When four Biology graduate students approached me in the Fall of 2017 with the idea to begin a science outreach group, I was excited to see them shaping the direction of their own training as scientists and encouraged them to think beyond the scope of our department.
In the sciences, we communicate our work every day and it is through this communication that we are able to improve and grow in our research. In order to be an efficacious and impactful scientist, one must be able to adapt to many situations and appropriately deliver the message. It is imperative to begin this practice early in a scientific career.
Present Your PhD offers such opportunities and it does so in a way that expands the impact beyond the individual. They train early-career scientists in strong communication skills, as well as to create and foster connections in our local Waco community. Through these connections, they provide a diverse range of communication channels for graduate students other than just engaging with their departmental peers and colleagues. The challenge of navigating science communication and sharing their knowledge with students as young as six to junior college students to the elderly requires a robust understanding of how to appropriately tailor their message to best connect with the audience. It is this practice that best serves graduate student development. As these participant students graduate and continue with their careers, they will need to tap into the skills they learned through their experiences with Present Your PhD to make the biggest impact.
I am proud to say that students from my own department had the drive to create a program like Present Your PhD, but I am even more excited to see its expansion to students and departments beyond Biology and the sciences. This transdisciplinary and collaborative organization provides tools that serve to improve STEM graduate student training throughout Baylor, which will only strengthen Baylor as a research university. Present Your PhD is certainly a cornerstone for growth opportunities.
Ryan S. King, Ph.D.
Professor and Graduate Program Director
Department of Biology