Each year, hundreds of students from many West campus majors have to take a public speaking course, which requires them to perform speeches in front of all of their classmates .
Students who are afraid to speak in front of others can find comfort in a public speaking training program and lab, the Communication Assessment and Learning Lab.
Political science and communication sophomore Ashley Johnson, a CALL student mentor, said she was a mentee in the program as a freshman and her love of the program was one of the reasons she came back as a mentor.
“It was awesome to come here and have mentors help me,” Johnson said. “The mentors were so helpful to me that I knew it was something I wanted to do.”
Johnson won the West campus Free Speech and Citizenship speech contest her freshman year. She said now that she is a mentor, she is enjoying helping others.
“Being a mentor has been so fun,” Johnson said. “We build a really great community here.”
The lab received national recognition this month for becoming just the eighth mentoring program in the U.S. to be certified by the National Association of Communication Centers.
Since it opened in 2003, the mentoring program has grown to 17 student mentors, four graduate student directors and a faculty director. The CALL mentors are all undergraduate students who have experience in public speaking and dedicate at least six hours every week to mentoring fellow students.
CALL Faculty Director Bonnie Wentzel said the program’s certification sets up an efficient model for the future and enhances the lab’s credibility.
“It means our peers around the country recognize that we put in the work to get this certification,” Wentzel said. “It also makes our center more sustainable, no matter who is in it.”
NACC is an organization that supports college communication centers around the U.S. To receive NACC certification, the CALL staff had to fill out an application evaluating the lab’s procedures and staff selection and training. Wentzel said completing the application helped her and the rest of the staff establish the lab's ideal design.
“The students get a lot out of it, because they become better public speakers, and the people who are mentors get more experience as well,” Wentzel said. “Mostly people are more confident, which is the first step.”
The lab is open to any student enrolled in one of five communication classes, including public speaking.
When students arrive at their first scheduled meeting with a CALL mentor, they are asked to practice a speech while being filmed. The students then watch the footage with their mentors and discuss how they performed. All public speaking students are required to visit CALL.
Communications graduate student Ana Terminel Iberri, a CALL graduate student director, said the lab continues to improve and the certification is a big step for its growth.
“It legitimizes our program," Terminel Iberri said. "We must be doing something right. It’s setting us up with structure, and it’s giving us that stamp of approval we needed.”
Terminel Iberri, who is nearing the end of her two-year assignment as graduate student director, said students typically return to the lab four or five times each semester. She said this is evidence of the lab's success.
“Typically, their experience is so positive that they want to keep coming back,” Terminel Iberri said. “Every student fills out a satisfaction survey, and 99 percent of the time, the comments are positive.”
Terminel Iberri said she is in contact with communication professors, which allows the lab to focus on subjects the students are studying at the time. She said there is usually a dramatic change in students’ public speaking abilities as the year goes on.
“We start off the year with people being very nervous to speak publically,” Terminel Iberri said. “As the semester goes on, they become much more confident.”
Reach the reporter at jwthrall@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Jthrall1
