Response:  There are many benefits.  In fact most graduates when looking back on their college years confirm that this one activity had a more positive impact on their lives than anything else they were involved in during college, including their formal coursework.  For most it teaches life changing, cognitive and presentational skills that will serve you in whatever the future may hold for you.  You learn and polish critical thinking, public speaking, research and persuasion skills far beyond what you can learn in any other setting.  You are trained to remain calm under duress, think outside the box, and resolve complex difficulties on short notice.  All of this occurs in a fun, game like environment where you develop lifelong friendships with other team members.  Most graduate schools and employers look very favorably upon forensics involvement.  This definitely gives you a step up on the competition.

Response:  Not at all.  Our program attempts to create a balance of new and experienced speakers.  Working with absolute novices and bringing them along quickly has always been an important goal of this program.  You will need to enroll in the debate class offered in the Fall though during your first year, to better learn the activity.  After that you need only take a one unit forensics practicum each semester you are involved on the team.

Response:  Quite to the contrary, involvement in forensics (responsible involvement of course) will benefit your academics at Point Loma.  The absences from classes for tournaments are limited, and pre-approved by the Provosts office.  The team members must be sure to attend all other classes of course.  The writing, researching, critical thinking and presentational skills you learn in speech and debate will make you a much better student

Response: Yes, there is limited scholarship assistance available for those on the speech and debate team.  Novices  without much past experience may not be eligible to begin with, but can work their way into a scholarship should they stay with the activity.  Our philosophy is to spread the limited scholarships around to most team members with smaller amounts, rather than to give substantial scholarships to just a few.  The better you do and the longer you are with the team, the better your chances for larger awards.  We also have an endowed scholarship, the James H. Jackson Speech and Debate Scholarship, that is awarded to one student each year to help with expenses

Response: Of course this may change from year to year, but we currently compete in NPDA Parliamentary Debate and the the 11 AFA individual events.  We try to attend NPDA Nationals, an Individual Events Nationals and Christian College Nationals each year if the budget allows, in addition to our other travels

Response:  This too changes from year to year. But at the time of this writing PLNU has been very competitive in NPDA Parli Debate since switching from CEDA debate around 1996, at which time we had also been quite successful in CEDA debate on the national and regional scale.  Since making the switch we have consistently ranked in the top five or six teams in the nation in the year-end school rankings, as well as placing high in the sweepstakes race at the National Championship year after year.  We were the 2003 NPDA Year Long Sweepstakes National Champion and the NPDA National Tournament Champions in 1999, and one of our students Katie Angliss was the NPDA top speaker in the nation in 2001.  Individual Events is also an important part of our program, and strengths have changed from year to year based on the team members.  But we have had national champions in many events in past years from various national organizations.  At the regional level when combining debate and IEs we are typically amongst the top three programs in sweepstakes at most tournaments we attend.  For more specific details on these tournaments look to Forensics Updates.

Response:  The steps to joining are as follows.  First, familiarize yourself with the rest of the information on the homepage to make sure your desires are consistent with the program.  We are a faith based institution with lifestyle rules that many secular schools do not impose.  If those freedoms are important to you, please consider one of the many fine secular speech programs available.  But if partying on weekends is not that important a life goal during college, and you like what you see then drop Director of Forensics, Skip Rutledge, an e-mail at skiprutledge@pointloma.edu  or call him at (619) 849-2391, and let him know of your interest and any questions you may have.

SELECTING A COLLEGE FORENSICS PROGRAM*  (85kb/30sec)

By Larry Bailey, College Liaison for NCFCA

(National Christian Forensics and Communication Association)

 

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