Meet your 2023 Three Minute Thesis contestants

WGLT General Manager RC McBride served as emcee for the event.

This year, 11 contestants will compete and have the opportunity to share their research with all in attendance. Hear from each contestant and learn more about their research topic, their department support, and the faculty and staff impact that has been made.

Fluddles

From left: Angelo Capparella, Bill Davison, RJ Rowley, and Brittany Menzel ‘22

Combine these two words, floods and puddles, and you get: fluddles. To some ears, it’s a quaint-sounding word, rhymes with cuddles, could even be something a child might say. But in nature, fluddles are quite significant and are the key component of a local wetlands preservation project.

Why is Bill Shields such a rock star at Illinois State?

Bill Shields teaches

Lecturing to about 700 students on subtropical deserts, when many of them have just rolled out of bed, is a tough assignment. But Bill Shields ’99, M.S. ’01, has done it 32 semesters in a row, waking mostly freshmen with his stories of growing up in the 1800s and hammering shoes on mules. Some of