Stacie Larsen
Co-Managing Editor
From 8:15 a.m.-3:30 p.m., on Sept.8, in the MCC, Cameron hosted the Oklahoma Speech Theatre Communication Association’s (OSTCA) 89th annual fall conference called “Advancing Arguments across the Curriculum.”
Associate Professor of communication studies Dr. Justin D. Walton said this was the first year the Department of Communication, English and Foreign Languages hosted the event.
As a 19-year member and former president of the OSTCA, Walton said he was happy to have had ten universities from across the state attend and compete in the event, which consisted of research presentations from both students and faculty, a public relations competition, various workshops, an awards banquet and a key note speaker.
“We had some workshops that dealt with pedagogy as it relates to student learning,” he said. “We had a panel that looked at teaching ideas [and] teaching tips for teaching communication subjects.
“We also had some theater workshops that were designed to give information about preparation for different theater roles and theater productions.”
He said it’s important for universities to have conferences like this because they provide opportunities for academic and applied work, including research and theater projects, to be shared among professionals.
“You [event participants] have an opportunity to present in front of other students, in front of other professors, and get the chance for a professor from a different university to respond to your work and to give you constructive feedback and criticism … which can be a really nice learning opportunity,” Walton said.
“If your work gets accepted, it means that it has been peerreviewed and given a stamp of approval by other professors in the state.”
After presentations, workshops and distribution of awards, Prairie View A&M University Communications Instructor and Executive Director of the National HBCU speech and debate league Christopher Medina spoke about his previous experiences and successes as Director of Forensics at Wiley College.
“During my tenure, my students won over 3,500 awards [and] fifty national championships,” Medina said. “They’re the only HBCU to win a national champion tournament. We did that five times.”
He said students had a 97% graduation rate and 91% of them received scholarship offers to graduate school.
“They are doing so many incredible things,” he said, “because they found their voice, they found their passion, and they were able to work hard enough that others saw their light.”
Cameron Senior art major Alexandra Patterson presented at the conference.
“When you make a research project, it’s for that class, and you’re stressing about what points to hit for grades,” she said.
“To present it at a conference knowing that everyone in that room came because they were interested in what you had to say was a whole different ball game. I liked it a lot.”