| National Debate Project Mission The National Debate Project is a collaborative project between Emory University's initiative for the Urban Debate League and Georgia State University to acquire the necessary resources to extend the benefits of debate and advocacy training to traditionally underserved students. Want to Contribute to the National Debate Project? Make checks payable to the National Debate Project and mail to: Dr.
Carol Winkler Contact Information Dr.
Carol Winkler Melissa
Wade Dr.
Joe Bellon Advocacy and Debate: The Benefits
History of the Atlanta Urban Debate League In an effort to make debate more accessible to all students, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status, the Barkley Forum of Emory University created the Urban Debate League (UDL) in 1985 in partnership with the Atlanta Public Schools. The mission of the UDL is to bring interscholastic debate and all of its related benefits to underserved student populations in Atlanta in order to level the playing field in education. The target population of the Atlanta UDL initially was high school inner-city students, but in the mid-1990s, the Atlanta UDL added a middle school program. Since students in middle school are not old enough to get jobs after school, they are especially susceptible to gangs and other destructive behavior. The middle school program has been a tremendous success; over 150 middle school students from across Atlanta participate in the program each year. The profound, empirically proven success of the UDL in Atlanta has led to the creation of UDLs across the country. There are currently UDLs in New York City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Seattle, Northern New Jersey, Providence, Oakland, and Washington, D.C. The number of students involved in Urban Debate Leagues has mushroomed in recent years; there are currently over 3,000 inner city children and teachers being served in these programs. Vision for the Future For the goals of serving traditionally underserved populations to come to fruition, the National Debate Project is seeking to create three integrated centers for educational renewal. Working together, each of these three complementary initiatives draw faculty, students and staff from three universities in an effort to provide the infrastructure necessary to sustain the urban debate league movement. The three programs include: 1) Center for Communication Excellence Located at Georgia State University, the Center for Communication Excellence will serve as the arena for creation, assessment, and distribution of advocacy training materials. The Center will serve as an institutional liaison for middle and high schools seeking to develop debate across the curriculum initiatives. It will also be the site of an annual public debate that nationally showcases the value of civil discourse. The Center builds on Georgia State’s previous experience with debate instruction for both students and teachers. On-campus workshops and summer institutes have trained hundreds of teachers and thousands of students in debate practice and pedagogy. Georgia State hosts one of the largest college debate tournaments each year and in 2003 will be the site of the 2003 National Tournament for high school debate. 2) The Debate Center Currently located at Southside High School, the Debate Center is an after-school program designed to give students and instructors access to one-on-one mentoring in research, argument construction, organization, and public speaking. A national model for using debate as a tool for learning outside the classroom, the Debate Center provides socio-economically challenged, high school debaters access to the same technology and instruction after school as their more privileged counterparts in private and affluent suburban schools. Open only one day a week and staffed entirely by volunteers, the Debate Center has already served hundreds of students in the metro-Atlanta area, averaging 80-90 students each night. The national success of debaters from schools such as Henry Grady, Harper-Archer, and Benjamin Mays can be traced, in part, to the center’s effective mentoring. 3) The Glenn Pelham Memorial Fund, Inc. An outgrowth of Emory University’s Barkley Forum, the The Glenn Pelham Memorial Fund is a nonprofit organization designed to administer the program’s finances, foster integrated relationships between the university partners, and implement a long-term fundraising strategy. The Glenn Pelham Memorial Fund is the most successful nonprofit debate organization in the nation. Since 1996, the Glenn Pelham Memorial Fund has attracted and dispersed more than two million dollars in grant monies to support debater-oriented programs for underserved urban and rural students. More than 600 high school students have received scholarships to summer debate institutes as a results of the foundation’s efforts. Having won 20 national championships since 1995, Emory debaters serve as a consistent source of the most qualified mentors anywhere for traditionally underserved populations. Fundraising Goals for the National Debate Project
|
||
