A Note from the Editor

A note from the editor of Speaker & Gavel, Todd Holm for volume 58, issue 1, 2022

Taking the Journal to the Digital Age

Editor\u27s introduction and comments to Spring 2016, volume 53, issue 1 of Speaker & Gavel

Editor\u27s Note

Editor\u27s note by Todd Holm from volume 52, issue 2 of Speaker & Gavel

(Re)Building a Team Culture

The purpose of this article is to provide a director of forensics who wishes to rebuild a forensics program with advice, ideas, and guidance based on organiza-tional theory, organizational change research, and lived experience. This article approaches organizational culture as a dynamic construct of an organization. “Proponents of the perspective of culture as a dynamic construct are interested in both a better understanding of organizations through application of a cultural per-spective and a conscious development of organizational culture” (Sackmann, 1990, p. 133). This perspective treats culture as something an organization is and something an organization has. The shaping of forensics program’s culture is crit-ical to the program\u27s success. White (2010) reminds us “There is not one ‘right’ type of organizational culture to which all teams should adhere” (p. 158). The information provided here is designed to help a director rebuild a team by rebuild-ing a team culture. This approach does not prescribe the culture to be built but does, from time to time, refer to specific examples of qualities a director may try to instill in the team These are not the qualities you must or even should instill, but rather they serve as examples of how to create change. Anyone who has been involved in competitive forensics activities knows building or rebuilding a forensics team is a daunting task. A competitively suc-cessful forensics team is a collection of exceptional people. As a director of fo-rensics, the task of finding and cultivating the talent required for a competitively successful program is not something to be taken lightly. This article addresses the pragmatics and philosophy of building or rebuilding a forensics program

The Teaching of Creativity: Process, Product, Environment, and Assessment

Teaching creativity is an issue gaining more attention. Businesses and universities alike are looking for ways to promote creative and innovative thinking. As universities look for ways to teach and assess creativity, interscholastic speech and debate competition should be held up as a model for such efforts. Through a combination of iterative performances, the mastering of domain knowledge, an environment that encourages/rewards creativity, and feedback based on the Consensual Assessment Technique, forensics offers an ideal environment for students to learn the process of developing creative products

A Letter from the Speaker & Gavel Editor - Big Change, Little Change

A letter from Speaker & Gavel editor Todd Holm about the future of Speaker & Gavel

Judge Training: Judging Individual Events, Judging Parliamentary Debate, Judging Lincoln-Douglas Debate

This article provides a tournament di-rector with a self-contained judge training packet that can be copied and handed to judges or modified with your tournament specific information. This article ex-plains the mechanics of judging Individual Events, Parliamentary Debate, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate by providing lay judges with help in terms of how to express their thoughts about the event they just watched. The following material does not, nor should any judge training, mandate what is good or bad in a perfor-mance, but rather describes how to provide valuable feedback based on their ed-ucated reactions to the performances

Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intent to Leave Among Collegiate Forensic Educators

The purpose of this study is to explore how burnout, stress, and job satisfaction impact coaches‘ intention to leave forensics. Some 111 collegiate forensics educators completed a survey examining workplace stress, burnout, job satisfaction, and perceived intent to leave forensics. Coaches who had thought about leaving forensics reported being more emotionally exhausted than coaches who had not thought about leaving. Female coaches also reported more stress than male coaches. Although many educators feel stressed, burned out, and have thought about leaving, they were still satisfied with their jobs as educators. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings and implications of the research

Forensics as a Correlate of Graduate School Success

Forensics is an extremely popular extracurricular activity in the communication discipline and often provides competitors with skills required for success in graduate school. This exploratory study examines the relationships between forensics competition and success in graduate school. Through a survey of 169 graduate students, we compare graduate students with a forensics background (n = 35) and those without a forensics background (n = 134). The study generates several important findings. First, graduate students who competed in forensics report higher levels success in graduate school and are more likely to present conference papers and publish in academic journals. Second, the level of participation and level of success in forensics plays a major role in determining graduate student success. Students who participated more in forensics and reported higher levels of success in forensics reported even higher levels of success in graduate school and participation in conferences and publications than their counterparts without a forensics background. The implications of this study as well as how this study can be used by faculty and coaches to help forensics students transition to graduate school are discussed

A Little Help from My Friends: A Relational Health Communication Competence Approach to Social Support for Forensic Educators

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that impact forensic educators’ perceived social support, including communication competence, job stress, and job burnout. Communicatively competent educators reported higher levels of administrative and family support than forensic educators who did not report high levels of communication competence. Educators who reported high levels of stress and burnout report lower levels of support from supervisors, coworkers, and family compared to educators who reported low levels of stress and burnout. Female coaches reported lower levels of support from supervisors, coworkers, and families, compared to male coaches. Educators with a large coaching staff reported high levels of coworker support; educators with small or no coaching staff did not report high levels of coworker support. These findings offer insight into the support networks of forensic educators and the impact of these networks on stress and burnout