Director's Letter

June 2, 2006

Dear Friends:

Some of you may remember me from when I worked as Pam Stepp's first assistant coach from 1984 to 1987. Last summer I returned to Cornell as the new Director of Forensics. Leaving a large, well-funded program I had created at Rochester over 12 years was hard, but I could not pass up the great opportunities available at Cornell to continue developing the program that Pam, and my predecessor Jethro Hayman, had worked so hard to establish.

This past year has been a success. Debaters competed in 14 tournaments and finished the year in the top 25 of both the CEDA and NDT rankings. We won regional tournaments in the novice and JV divisions and had strong varsity showings at national tournaments. We had the third largest policy debate team in the United States with 43 Cornell students competing. Our IE team competed in ten tournaments and individual students won on a regular basis. Five students qualified and competed in both the AFA and NFA National Tournaments.

Tangible accomplishments from this past year include:

• For the first time in a number of years we hired an individual events coach.
• We were able to once again secure office space for the team in Kennedy Hall (with a working copier).
• We reorganized the team's community service course. One portion of the course meets with local school children between ages 5 and 12 at the public library to teach courses in basic public speaking and debate. The other travels to a maximum security prison to teach convicted juveniles community reentry skills and has started a small prison debate team.

Pam Stepp did a great job of developing a strong culture of support for the team among the alumni during her time as Director of Forensics at Cornell. She is still very supportive of the program and spoke at our end-of-the-year banquet this past April. Now the task of continuing to generate a significant portion of our team's annual budget is one of my responsibilities. My goal is to raise $20,000 by the end of June 2006 to meet our immediate need of paying for the new initiatives I introduced this past year, as well as providing funds to again hire an individual events coach, travel to the national debate tournaments, and host the first ever Pam Stepp Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament this coming fall.

Your efforts to help the Cornell Forensics Society will be greatly appreciated by the students and myself. Your donations are critically important to my vision: making Cornell's speech and debate program the best in the nation. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Sam Nelson
Director of Forensics

P.S. I am trying to connect and reconnect with as many alums as possible. Please contact me at smn33@cornell.edu or by phone at (607) 255-2771 to let me know where you are and what you are doing.

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