Priyanka Sharma
Staff Writer
Students will have a chance to demonstrate their speaking skills and compete for a chance to win a $500 scholarship at the 25th annual intramural speech tournament.
The competition will be held on Thursday, April 21, at the Trojan Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Hall School of Journalism and Communication and is free for all Troy students to participate.
“A student does not need to have any speaking experience to participate in this competition,” said Maryjo Cochran, professor of communication, who is organizing the event. “I think this is a great chance for students to practice public speaking.”
There will be five categories in the competition: informative speaking, persuasive speaking, storytelling, prose and poetry. There will be a prose and poetry competition in Spanish as well.
“We’ve had a better turnout after adding Spanish prose and poetry,” Cochran said. “The average turnout is about a hundred students.”
A $500 scholarship award is given to the overall best speaker who has the highest points from three categories.
“If a student will be in school for fall and wants to take part in three categories, they can compete for the $500 scholarship towards the tuition,” Cochran said.
The winner in each category will be awarded a trophy and certificate, and the students in second and third places will be awarded certificates as well.
Cochran said that there will be three judges in each of the categories. She said that the panel of judges will consist of professors from various departments, in addition to Troy locals.
“We have 20 judges from teachers from diverse faculties like theater, communication, language to people from the community,” Cochran said. “We probably will videotape the winning performance and work with TrojanVision to make video copies of it. We will also send press releases about the winners.”
Cochran said the attire for the participants is business professional.
The deadline for the application is April 15. Applications can be collected from Tori Averett from the theater department, Johanna Alberich from the modern languages department or Cochran in the Hall School of Journalism and Communication.
“I have been doing this for three years, and it always is a lot of fun,” Cochran said. “I encourage students to participate and have a speaking experience.”
Further questions can be directed to Cochran at mcochran@troy.edu or her office number at 334-808-6601.
