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Report from the First Vice President, CEDA Summer Conference

Dear Community,

Under the leadership of President Tuna, the summer conference was 
very productive.  I am very thankful to Pam Stepp who has instilled 
in us the necessity of "taking the time to work on our organization." 
 It is also wonderful to have such an effective, wise and 
caring person as Gina Lane on board.

In our brainstorming session, Tuna led an important and 
open "brainstorming" discussion to solicit everyone's general ideas 
and concerns.  David Berube typed up the results of the discussion 
--but just briefly, Tuna listed the following categories of concern 
on the board: fear of splintering, making debate open, promoting 
success for our students after their participation in debate, 
strenghtening our advocacy for our pedagogy, too much top focus, 
program changes, diversity and making sure we effectively implement 
our ideas.  We also talked at length about the last one and generated 
ideas for making sure things get done including: providing rewards 
for the service work of our members, realistically assessing our 
goals and making a commitment to a specific goal and accomplishing 
that goal by a specified date by developing clear action steps and 
timelines for our tasks, making time to meet, supporting regional 
committees, utilizing all of the good work of our committees and 
providing support for our regional reps.  

In my report, I discussed:  
(1) the topic committee's work (see my previous post Report from the 
topic committee including the committee's proposed amendments to 
the process); 
(2) updated everyone on the mentoring program and plans 
to expand it (to coaching concerns for faculty and also set one up 
for students);
(3) talked about what good panels we have after planning 
the NCA conference in effort to encourage everyone to attend and
(4) reminded everyone about the availability of the funding proposal. 
(5) floated the idea of a 21st century gift project --perhaps a 
tape of debaters and coaches describing debate in our century as 
a gift to those in the next one.  

Tuna, Russ and I also met to discuss the possibility of a grant 
writing committee.  Such a committee might make and implement plans 
to assist our members in their grant writing efforts --for example, 
by conducting a grant writing workshop at one of our development 
conferences.  It would also collect information about potential 
funding sources to distribute to our members.

I am very excited about the possibility of a development 
conference/"World Debate Summit" in the summer of 
1999 or 2000  that focuses on outreach and community building.  Tuna, 
Gina and I are currently working on a proposal based on the ideas 
from our meeting and will let you know more as our work progresses.  

You should know that the individuals serving on CEDA's 
organizational committees are doing fantastic work!  Their ideas are 
outstanding and they have been very effective at outlining and taking 
action steps toward implementing their ideas.  I encourage you to 
also get involved.  We can all benefit from what you have to offer.

I hope that all is well with you and yours and I look forward to 
seeing y'all on the circuit and at NCA this year.  

Best,

Carrie

Carrie Crenshaw, Ph.D.
University of Alabama
CEDA First Vice President
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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