Carleton graduate student Maureen McKeague has won the final round of an international competition that called for science students to present their PhD thesis through interpretive dance.
McKeague, along with 14 other Carleton students under the guidance of professor Maria DeRosa, won Science’s international “Dance Your PhD” contest by presenting her research about how DNA strands interact with each other.
McKeague and fellow student Elyse Bernard choreographed the dance and were in New York to accept the award Oct. 18.
McKeague and her group took home a total prize of $1,000, and the dance has been published on Science’s website.
“We’re very excited that we won,” Bernard said, “We were happy to even be a finalist.”
Winning the international round of the competition has given Carleton a lot of attention, including from a Harvard professor, who judged the competition and decided to show the dance to his students, DeRosa said.
“Carleton graduate students are teaching Harvard’s,” De Rosa said. “I think [the video’s popularity] is definitely going to improve our visibility around the world. I’m already getting emails from across the continent saying that they’ve seen our video and that they’re using it in their classrooms.”
The dance was choreographed by McKeague and Bernard, and involved their entire lab. DeRosa said that all of the students played a role in the making of the video and that not one student opted out of participating.
Group members are already getting feedback from fellow students, other Carleton professors and even strangers who are seeing the video online.
“It’s really nice that other professors are interested in what we’ve done and that the science community in particular is enjoying our dance and wants to share it with other people,” McKeague said.
Both McKeague and Bernard are also TAs for undergrad classes, and their own students are recognizing the success of the video.
“I had students in my lab tell me that one of their profs showed it to them in class,” Bernard said.
DeRosa, McKeague and Bernard also said the video serves the important purpose of explaining complicated science research to people who are not familiar with scientific theories.
“Scientists can have great ideas and they can be doing really important work, but if they can’t explain that to the general public, then that work will never mean anything,” DeRosa said. “It’s important that they have ways to communicate and that’s something a lot of scientists lack. The arts are one way to explain theories to regular people.”
She said her students also agreed with the importance of using art forms like dance, theatre or music to explain their research to the rest of the public, saying that the video is already helping them to explain their own research to their family and friends who previously had difficulties understanding what the students were working on.