Join us for the Publishing, Copyright, and Scholarship Series! Check out the list of spring 2024 events below:

Publication for Students 

Considering publishing as an undergraduate? Join us on Wednesday, March 13, from 4-5 p.m. for a virtual workshop on how to navigate that process and why you might want to, along with some tips about copyright and authorship with Veritas as an example. This event, co-sponsored by Falvey Library and the Center for Research and Fellowships, is intended for undergraduate students. Co-hosted by Librarians Nancy Foasberg, Nicole Daly, and Gray Kidd, one of the Editors-in-Chief of Veritas.

REGISTER HERE

But Is It Fair Use? A Copyright Discussion and Q&A 

Fair use is a very useful – but often confusing – exception to copyright. Join us on Wednesday, March 20, from 12-1 p.m. for a virtual Q&A discussion that will include an introduction to fair use, along with discussion of its history, hot topics in fair use, and most of all, your questions about fair use. Have a project or a use in mind? Bring your questions! This event, co-sponsored by Falvey Library and Villanova University General Counsel, is intended for undergraduate and graduate students. Panelists will be Laz Szabo and Mark Hewlett, Associate Generals Counsels, Villanova University; Michael Foight, Director of Distinctive Collections and Digital Engagement, and Librarian Nancy Foasberg. Hosted by Shawn Proctor.

Photo courtesy of Isabel Choi.

Your ten-year-old sibling might ask you one morning, “So, what exactly do you do at school?” What if you study thermomechanical and electromagnetic properties of ceramic composites at high temperatures or smooth orthogonal decompositions? What would you say? How would you say it? This is the question graduate students competing in Three Minute Thesis (3MT) are forced to wonder and answer. At Villanova University’s 3MT competition, graduate students had to answer the question, “What do you do?” in three minutes or less. 

Held in The John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, Feb. 24, 13 finalists (master’s and doctoral students at Villanova) presented their research to members of the audience in front of a large slideshow presentation. The stage was setup so that audience members were able to see the three-minute timer. Similar to that of a game show, audience members watched the timer tick down to minutes and then to mere seconds. After each presentation, numerous judges (Villanova faculty) would give feedback before going on to the next contestant.

Towards the end of the event, audience members were able to vote for a “people’s choice” award while the judges calculated the first and second place winners. Before the winners were announced, audience members were able to hear a couple personal comments from the contestants themselves–their process, struggles, and aspirations.

Eliana Uriona took first place for her presentation “Optimizing Biochar Conditions for Heavy Metal Immobilization in Contaminated Soils.” Uriona also earned the people’s choice award. Grace Sutoris, won second place for her presentation “Using Machine Learning to Detect Underlying Heartbeat During CPR.”

Representing Villanova University, Uriona will compete at the Northeast Regional 3MT Competition on Friday, April 28. The virtual competition will be hosted by the University of New Hampshire. Watch Villanova’s 2023 3MT competition here. Be sure to check out Falvey’s blog next year for 2024 3MT announcements.

Isabel Choi ’26, is Communication & Marketing Assistant at Falvey Library.

“Attending the competition definitely inspired me…to see dedicated graduate students present their studies….perhaps graduate research is something I should consider pursuing too!”

Villanova will be hosting its virtual 3MT competition on Friday, March 26, from 3-4 p.m. Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is a competition for graduate students to develop and showcase their research communication skills. Competitors must effectively explain their research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. A panel of judges will select a first-place winner ($1,000 award), a second-place winner ($500 award), and audience members in attendance will select an audience choice winner ($250 award). The first-place winner will represent Villanova in a regional 3MT competition.

To watch the live final presentations, register here.

Once registered, you will be sent a link to the event. This ACS approved event, sponsored by the Office of Graduate Studies (CLAS) and Falvey Memorial Library, is free and open to the public. The Three Minute Thesis was founded by The University of Queensland.

By Rebecca Oviedo

Each year theses submitted by Villanova’s undergraduate Honors Program graduating class are added to the Villanova Digital Collection in Falvey’s Digital Library. This research becomes part of the permanent records of the University, kept by Villanova University Archives.

These capstone theses represent the culmination of Villanova students’ academic experience and are valuable records of the community’s scholarly output. They also capture the intellectual trends and contemporary issues that were important to students at a particular point in time.

The theses of this year’s senior class of 2020 are no different. The most current pressing issue of systemic racism is discussed across topics centered on education, voting rights, and access to birth control. Vaccines (and the anti-vaccination movement) are studied through the academic lenses of students from the Department of Biology, the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing. There are submissions in creative writing, and extensive reports on research conducted in campus labs. Several essays touch upon ethics in medicine and public health, and more than one address gender bias and depictions in sports and the media. One Wildcat hypothesized on “Quantifying Jay Wright’s Greatness.”

At the conclusion of this most unusual academic year, each and every Wildcat can be proud of their academic achievements.

Rebecca Oviedo is Distinctive Collections Librarian/Archivist at Falvey Memorial Library.

Photo by Jan Mellström on Unsplash.

Are you looking for a Villanova thesis or dissertation? You’ve come to the right place! Falvey Memorial Library has been collecting masters theses and doctoral dissertations written by Villanova students since 1920!

However, they’re not always so easy to find…

• Some dissertations and theses are held in print on library shelves, although they’re housed in a locked area and must be retrieved by Access Services staff.
• Others are online, some of which are in the Villanova Digital Library and others of which are accessible via ProQuest.
• A portion of the print copies housed in Falvey are represented in the online library catalog, while others are not.
• We also hold undergraduate honors theses from the most recent 20 years, and a small number of other undergraduate theses, in our online collections.

It’s confusing.

To facilitate access to these Villanova-authored materials, we have created a quick guide to finding dissertations and theses at Falvey Memorial Library, organized by school/college and by year of publication. You can access the guide here (https://library.villanova.edu/research/self-help/general-tutorials/finding-villanova-theses-and-dissertations). Follow the steps described, and you’ll be blissfully reading that thesis in no time.

If you need more help finding dissertations or theses, please contact your friendly librarian. We are always happy to help!

Susan Turkel, MA, MLS, is the Social Sciences Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.