Parents, Guardians, Relatives

  

Whitman's Library is a beautiful place for study and research. WNDI staff work one-on-one with your son or daughter to provide a safe and rewarding atmosphere.

This is a supportive, safe and well chaperoned camp.
Residence halls are supervised. We have a 19-point list of expectations of students and the camp keeps students busy learning and in fun group activities throughout the day—9:45am to 10:30pm. We take attendance four times each day to assure that we know where students are.

Safety certified drivers for those needing transportation
We provide transportation from and to the Walla Walla airport and bus station (free) and from and to the Pasco airport and bus station ($20 each way). Our drivers are safety-certified after completing an extensive, nationally recognized program.  Students will be taken directly to campus and will get the help they need to move into and out of their rooms.

 

·  Plane-Bus Tickets

·  Get your Shuttle

·  Driving to the WNDI

Keep in contact with your son/daughter
We encourage students to keep in contact with parents. Students will have phones and easy access to their e-mail throughout the camp. You will be able to send postal mail during the camp and we e-mail you confirmation when we deliver the mail to your son/daughter. If at anytime you aren’t getting a response from your son/daughter J, e-mail Jim and he’ll make sure your son/daughter is notified right away to contact you.

Family Feel Camp
Students get individual attention. They are not going to be left in a large lab, lecture halls, and on their own. Your son/daughter will be interacting with others in small labs, working with our staff one-on-one, and hanging out in our supervised residence hall. We do our best to make the camp a comfortable environment for the shy kids, the sports interested, the outgoing, every kind of kid.

Quality Instruction
Students at our camp work with some of the finest minds in college forensics. These are people who win regional and national circuit tournaments, who are outstanding college students with very good GPAs, and who are excellent teachers. As one high school coach attending our camp put it “They are very smart, nice, role models for high schoolers wanting to be successful college students!” Most importantly, they really care about their effort and work enthusiastically to answer questions, to help students practice, to facilitate the improvement that your son/daughter wants.

Educational Program
Your son or daughter’s educational growth as a debater and more broadly as a student is our goal. Whitman is a tier one national liberal arts school (top 35 in the country) and has one of the nation’s highest rated debate programs (2005 #1 NPDA; 2007 #3 NDT Varsity). Students get the practice, the evidence, and the expert coaching they need to assure their growth and success during the year.

The Edge for Success
Your son/daughter won’t have to do a crash course on the topic at tournaments in the fall when it is too late while handling volumes of research alone and trying to keep up with their homework. Instead, students leave our camp with a thorough understanding of their debate topics and with hundreds and hundreds of pages of material they need in their debates. And they do so after being instructed by and working one-on-one with some of the best minds in the forensics community. Our camp gives your son/daughter the edge they need for success during the debate season.

Great Preparation for College
Whitman College is a beautiful setting for learning. Your son or daughter will experience residence hall living, attending classes without parental wake up calls, eating and socializing with other smart, college bound students, and learning in one of the most engaging and rigorous programs in the country. While students learn independent living, they are still given the support and monitoring of our caring staff. The WNDI experience provides a great foundation for success when your son or daughter attends college.

We care about the kids at our camp. We welcome your questions.
Have a specific concern? This is your son or daughter and that is important. E-mail the camp director, Jim Hanson, at hansonjb@whitman.edu
If you want to speak with Jim on the phone, just e-mail him with your phone number, good times to call in the afternoon and evening, and tell him that you’d like to talk to him on the phone.

Click here for Online Registration and Info

WHAT SEVEN PARENTS SAID ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE WITH WNDI:

  • “Our son thoroughly enjoyed camp and learned a lot for his senior year of debate. We want to thank you so very much for keeping in touch with us about camp schedules, etc. It makes life much easier as a parent knowing your child is at a very organized camp with great leaders! THANK YOU!!!”
  • “You have absolutely the most user friendly program I have ever seen and our daughter has been to quite a few programs.”
  • “Thanks for the great experience our daughter had at camp. The worst part of her summer was leavin WNDI after 2 weeks because she “had” to be in the Bahamas. And thanks for your excellent communication about the program and about her participation.”
  • “I’m a coach with my son here at camp. I have attended several other national institutes and this is the best camp I have seen. It is well organized, has so much individual attention, and features an incredible, engaging, really nice, and very supportive staff.”
  • Our daughter absolutely loved debate camp. She worked hard and felt like she learned a lot. The setting at Whitman was beautiful and you did a wonderful job of making all feel secure including the parents back home :). I suppose the best sign of all is that she told us she would really like to return and learn more next summer!
  • Thank you for all the communication. We truly appreciate knowing what is going on and knowing that you're so organized. The pictures are great too. The camp is everything that the brochures say and more. Our son is learning a lot and having a great time. He doesn't want to come home!
  • Our son attended two camps this summer: your 3 week policy camp and 2 weeks at a Spanish camp in Marbella Spain on the beach with Spanish lessons, excursions to Spanish villages, lots of fried food, and teens from all over the world. He certainly improved his Spanish language skills there, but by far, he enjoyed the WNDI camp so much more. He's still talking about it and can't wait until the debate season starts. Wanted to let you know that he thought his time with the novice group was definitely worthwhile.

    He believes that of all the debaters attending policy debate camps this summer, the 3 novice debaters from WNDI came home with the most evidence. You must have some incredible staff to collect that much evidence. In addition, Carl enjoyed the camaraderie of the campers and staff, a nice group of people. Carl thought that his debate skills improved tremendously from his 3 weeks at WNDI and appreciated the personal attention he received.

    Now from a parent's perspective. We were forwarding your camp pictures to the many relatives who care for Carl. All appreciated the pix. How comforting it is to see your smiling teen seated at a picnic table surrounded by campers munching on fried chicken & corn on the cob in an idyllic park ... reminiscent of a 4th of July celebration in the heartland. So, how much coercion was involved to get the campers to send 3 postcards, various e-mails, and call home every so often? These are gold to parents. We also appreciated a schedule that included, besides the Sunday picnics, some downtime on the weekends, the Saturday night movies, and sleep-in time. It somewhat allayed our fears that he would burn out from such a long day which included 10:30 pm meetings and midnight bed checks.

    You've got a great program. Thanks for providing Carl with 3 weeks of a great debate experience in a safe, friendly environment. We thought it would be like boot camp. In fact, relatives looked with horror at the daily policy schedule and thought that we were nuts to let him go! On the contrary, he's never enjoyed a summer program so much.
  • Thank you so much for a WNDI experience for my son which completely surpassed my expectations for organization, content, teaching, security and overall value.  In addition, the support and care extended to my son to enable him to participate at his best, was simply unprecedented in the academic programs he's experienced thus far.  I would recommend this program without reservation to any parent/student seeking a gold-standard summer experience.

Click here for Online Registration and Info