
In celebration of its 10-year anniversary, Grad Slam got an exciting revamp!
Now renamed the Grad Slam Showcase, this annual event brings our campus community together and spotlights the amazing research being done by our graduate students. Graduate students will present their research in 3-minute talks that are clear, direct, and engaging to diverse audiences. Throughout the Showcase, we give out over $20,000 in cash prizes to participants.
Changes for the 2023 Showcase include:
Expanded Professional Development Opportunities. These workshops focus on key public speaking skills such as content development, stage presence, visuals, and adapting to different audiences and mediums. We also offered practice sessions so that participants can get feedback on their talks from Graduate Division staff as well as Grad Slam alum.
Divisional Competitions. We've assigned each department to a specific divisional preliminary round. These groupings are organized so as to provide roughly the same number of enrolled students per group and to increase disciplinary representation in the Final Round.
Reconfigured Judging and Scoring. We will no longer have restrictions on the number and content of slides that presenters can use. We have redone the scoring rubric. And we are changing up the composition of our judging panels to include members of the student body.
We hope that these changes will make Grad Slam an event that all of our graduate students feel included in and can benefit from.
Click below to find out more about the rest of this year's showcase:

Questions?
Contact Shawn Warner, Director of Graduate Student Professional Development at UCSB.