Dakota Dickerson, a student in the applied anthropology master’s program, won the judge’s award, and Ashley Moll, a student in the biology master’s program, won the people’s award during IUP’s Three Minute Thesis event held during IUP’s annual Research Appreciation Week.
Dickerson presented her original research, “Fetal Pig Decomposition in Western Pennsylvania: Characterization of Burial Environment and Decomposition Processes in a Western Pennsylvania Non-Human Outdoor Decomposition Facility.” Her faculty mentor is Andrea Palmiotto, Department of Anthropology, Geospatial and Earth Sciences.
Moll presented her original research, “The Effectiveness of Using Selfie Cameras to Monitor the Movement of Allegheny Woodrats.” Her faculty mentor is Joseph Duchamp, a faculty member in the IUP Department of Biology.
Additional finalists selected for the competition included Brady Blackburn, a student in the biology master’s program, who presented “Fish Community Responses to Culvert Replacement in Pennsylvania Headwater Streams” (faculty mentor, David Janetski, Department of Biology), and Isabel Srour, an applied archaeology master’s student, who presented “Empowering the Local Voice: A Community-Based Archaeology Project at Tall Husban” (faculty mentor, Lara Homsey-Messer, Department of Anthropology, Geospatial and Earth Sciences).
Held during IUP’s annual Research Appreciation Week, the annual Three Minute Thesis competition is an event for graduate students to present their original scholarship to a panel of judges in just three minutes with the aid of only one static PowerPoint slide as a visual aid. This international program has been part of IUP’s Research Appreciation Week for more than a decade. Students must apply to be chosen for the competition.
Dickerson is the first IUP student to complete her thesis project using IUP’s newly created forensic outdoor research station, opened in 2024. The station represents a collaboration of faculty from anthropology, criminology, biology, and geology and aims to promote forensic science and decomposition-related research and training.
The outdoor station includes an enclosed half-acre on the university’s south campus, where students and faculty are encouraged to develop and pursue collaborative research projects.
Dickerson began her research in fall 2024, with placement of nine stillborn pigs on the ground surface or buried in shallow graves to observe differences in decomposition rates and scavenging activity over a one-year period. IUP students in anthropology and forensic bioscience courses were invited to observe and participate in her research.
The pigs on the ground surface were observed and photographed daily for the first several weeks postmortem, while trail cameras recorded any disturbances or scavengers to the area for the duration of the project.
Because decomposition is influenced by climate and environment, this regionally unique research station offers insight into the decomposition influences of western Pennsylvania. Faculty and students have also created mock crime scenes and clandestine graves to facilitate interagency field training, including for criminology students from Carlow University in Pittsburgh.
Her research poster about her fetal pig decomposition project also won the John J. and Char Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Outstanding Poster for a graduate student during the 2025 Scholars Forum, also held during Research Appreciation Week.
She was part of the IUP student cohort that completed a 2024 field school near Frankfurt, Germany, funded by the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency through the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Inc., to look for artifacts at the site of a crash of a World War II B-17 airplane.
Dickerson has been a graduate assistant for IUP graduate admissions and a graduate student representative on the Parking Committee, worked on the Friends of Lebanon Cemetery GPS project, did a Native American Grave Repatriation Act internship, worked with students visiting IUP for a forensic science project, worked with IUP’s Anthropology Day, and was a zooarchaeological intern.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in archaeology from the State University of New York, Potsdam, in archaeology and did a number of hands-on experiences, including completing an historical field school on a Civil War encampment site in northern New York state and assisting in a Revolutionary War cemetery excavation with the New York State Museum. She has also worked as a special education teacher.
Moll’s presentation about her research project also won the John J. and Char Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Outstanding Podium Presentation for a graduate student and the Women in STEM Awards during the 2025 Scholars Forum, also held during IUP’s Research Appreciation Week.
“I really enjoyed participating in the three-minute thesis,” Moll said. “It made me rethink how I typically explain my research by making sure to get the important information across, but not go over the three-minute limit. It is more of a challenge than people think, having to condense over a year of research down to three minutes.”
Blackburn won the graduate student outstanding poster presentation and the Sigma XI Scientific Research Honor Society Graduate Scholars Forum Poster Award for his research poster presented during IUP’s 2024 Scholars Forum, which is also part of IUP’s Research Appreciation Week.
As part of professor Janetski’s laboratory group, Blackburn has participated in several ecology education days with local high schools and groups, working to educate students and members of the public on freshwater ecology. These included electrofishing demonstrations and freshwater macroinvertebrate sampling demonstrations.
He has also hosted high school students for a tour of IUP’s John J. and Char Kopchick Hall, IUP’s $90-million home to the Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, presenting information on research and freshwater ecology.
“The Three Minute Thesis is a unique opportunity that bucks the trends of conventional 15-minute formal presentations, as it challenges presenters to reduce their often complex, intricate theses that they have been working on for multiple years down to their most basic form,” Blackburn said.
“By instituting such a stringent time frame, a presenter must be able to effectively cover the most important aspects of their thesis and prioritize the key takeaways. Another great part of this experience is that it brings together members of different research communities that may not normally overlap, and therefore requires that the presenter simplify their language so that listeners can understand the topics regardless of their background.
“This is truly a great experience for all presenters as it brings us together as an IUP community, but it also helps us to become better communicators who, regardless of time or audience, can convey the messages our research projects seek to provide,” he said.
In 2022, IUP was designated as a Doctoral University-High Research Activity (R2) by the National Center for Postsecondary Research’s Carnegie Classification in recognition of its commitment to research and student success; this ranking was reaffirmed in February 2025.
IUP is one of only two public universities in Pennsylvania and one of only 97 public universities with this ranking in the United States. More than 3,900 colleges and universities are included in the ranking system.