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Initiative Overview The academic cornerstone of a Whitman education is the commitment to helping students develop their abilities to think critically and to communicate ideas persuasively. While our faculty has placed a premium on writing, discussion, and debate, we must do more to integrate oral presentation skills and multimedia technologies into the curriculum. By establishing a team of faculty dedicated to promoting oral communication skills and providing mentoring to our students, we expect to make a significant difference in our curriculum over a brief period, while at the same time changing the very culture of Whitman College. Whitman has developed a two-pronged approach to promote oral advocacy skills: providing mentoring for our students, and conducting workshops for our faculty that promote oral communication skills and multimedia technologies across the curriculum. The bulk of these activities will take place in Whitman's Center for Communication Arts and Technology, our state-of-the-art facility for writing, rhetoric, and various communication technologies. Within this facility is housed the Writing Center, the Department of Rhetoric and Public Address, research space for the speech and debate teams, and the Center's Multimedia and Computer Graphics Laboratory.
Program Objectives Objective One is to develop a solid nucleus of faculty with strong oral presentation skills. To that end, over the next two years several faculty workshops will be conducted that focus on oral communication skills and multimedia technologies. These workshops will include
Objective two is to improve our students' oral presentation skills by providing mentoring from two interns selected for their exceptional presentation skills. The interns will provide a number of services to students including videotaping and critiquing student presentations and offering suggestions for improving style and, to some extent, content. During the first semester of each year, the interns will be available to help students at all levels (first-year to senior). During the second semester of each year, the interns will concentrate on assisting seniors who are presenting at the annual Whitman Undergraduate Conference or preparing for their final oral exams.
Evaluation After each component of this grant, participating faculty will be surveyed to determine the impact these initiatives have had on their teaching, the differences they have noticed in their students' oral communication skills, and the overall benefit of the initiative to the curriculum. Student evaluations will also be conducted, especially as they pertains to these new initiatives.
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