Our Interview With Kelsey Abele, Director of Forensics and Assistant Professor at West Texas A&M University

‍Juris Education interviewed Kelsey Abele, Director of Forensics and Assistant Professor at West Texas A&M University, for an exclusive look at what sets the school's debate union apart.

What are some of the biggest takeaways or real-world benefits that students gain from participating in your debate union?

In forensics (especially in college) you get the opportunity to advocate for meaningful things. This requires knowing and understanding a research process and being able to employ those tactics to do things in "the real world". Through writing and revision, you become a formidable writer who adapts well to criticism. Through performance you become a compassionate and intuitive student of human emotion. Competition requires you to learn how to be both brave and humble, resilient and thoughtful. Speech and debate students are often the most critical and the most nuanced when approaching complex situations and creative in their problem-solving processes. Students learn to break down difficult tasks into parts and prioritize how to get those resolved. Speech and debate teach a series of complex life skills valuable in any career trajectory from law and public service to engineering and management.

How does debating help students become more confident speakers?

The practice of speaking in public on a weekly basis is the only way to become a better speaker. You get better at understanding others and the arguments they make as well as crafting comprehensive responses to those arguments. It makes you a better listener, a better interpersonal communicator, and a more skilled speaker. 3. Do you think aspiring law school applicants can benefit from joining a debate union? How so?

I have had a number of students from my various speech teams go to competitive law schools. The process of revision when it comes to applications and the ability to be critical of your own work makes you a more flexible thinker and a compelling member of an incoming cohort. In addition to bragging about the tournaments you've won, you can talk about how you process information, what kinds of research you have already accomplished, and ways to implement solutions to complex problems in application essays. 4. What advice would you give to aspiring law students who are considering joining a debate union in college but aren’t sure if it’s the right fit for them?

As with all extracurricular activities, you will get out of it what you put into it. Students who put in the hours to be good at competitive speech and debate in college will have not only the skills demanded by excellence in the activity but will have exceptional networking reach. Almost all of my close friends have been involved in competitive speech and debate and almost all of them have advanced degrees ranging from law to education to pharmacy. It is difficult to think of another co-curricular activity that so accentuates a multidimensional skillset easily applied to a diverse range of topics and career paths.

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