The Voice - Student Newspaper

Forensics Club promotes life skills

Don't confuse these forensics enthusiasts at Glendale Community College with those sleuths that gather scientific evidence on television crime shows.

It's a different kind of forensics; namely, intercollegiate speech competitions that are conducted in Arizona and throughout the country.

The events may take several forms, including debate; public speaking on persuasive, informative and humorous themes; limited speech preparation on impromptu topics; and interpretation of prose, poetry and drama.

The more than a dozen members of the Forensics Club at GCC, as well as their academic advisors, are kept busy throughout the school year packing their bags, hitting the road and participating at national and regional speech events.

For example, the club competed in early February at a forensics meet in Boston, where the team not only gathered second-place honors but several team members returned home with a number of individual awards.

Later in the month, and much closer to Glendale, the team participated at another forensics competition at Arizona State University in Tempe. Team members again won second-place honors as well as a number of individual awards.

The team makes frequent trips for forensics contests in California and is gearing up for a major competition that is set for late April in Portland, Ore., according to Kirt Shineman, a communications professor and the director of forensics at GCC.

"Forensic is a great way to learn self-confidence, self-esteem and good reasoning skills," Shineman said. "It also promotes other life skills, such as cooperation, getting along with other people and learning ways to handle different conflicts."

One team member, Sarah Watkins, agreed. Watkins, who gathered two first-place individual awards at the Boston meet and three at the ASU competition, described Shineman as a "wonderful coach" and a "life-changing mentor for me."

"I love forensics," Watkins said. "I think it is a good experience. When I first joined the team, I didn't have any experience in public speaking. And I was a very nervous speaker."

Her sentiments were echoed by two other club members, Anton Nowels and Madison Alexander, both of whom also gathered individual honors at the Boston meet.

"It's a lot of hard work," Nowels said. "But it gives you the opportunity to travel and strengthen your communication skills."

Alexander said, "Oh, I just love it. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in sharpening their public-speaking skills."

Alexander is the sister of Roxan Alexander-Barr, a speech activities assistant at GCC and an advocate for the Forensics Club, one of more than three dozen extracurricular campus groups that enrich life and learning for GCC students.

"I think there are skills in forensics that are very applicable to the real world," Alexander-Barr said. "You have to be competitive and you also get the chance to hone your academic skills and do something that's really applicable to future job skills."

For students interested in exploring or joining, the Forensics Club meets from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday in the atrium of the Faculty Offices 02 building.

Please send comments to brent.whiting@gccvoice.com