OXFORD, Miss. – When used with skill and confidence, the spoken word can be a powerful tool to sway opinions or to present innovative ideas.
MBA students at the University of Mississippi get a chance to out-talk their peers this week with two days of lively public speaking competition.
The Speaker’s Edge event, set for Thursday and Friday (Jan. 14-15), helps MBA students hone their skills of high-impact speech.
They learn to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own personal speaking style and adapt their messages to different audiences and situations.
Friday’s final rounds, which begin at 11 a.m. in the FedEx Student-Athlete Academic Support Center, are free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the School of Business Administration, the Lott Leadership Institute, FedEx Corp., and Extreme Arts and Sciences, the annual competition is in its seventh year at UM. The event recognizes that communication is a vital part of the business world.
“It’s interesting for me that with all the high-tech we have right now, including Web and e-mail and so forth, real business is still fundamentally a face-to-face interaction,” said Randy Harrington, CEO of Extreme Arts and Sciences in Eugene, Ore. “There’s really nothing that replaces the power of the spoken word.”
The students, who get one hour of credit for the event, have participated in an intense week-and-a-half “boot camp” for speakers, said Bethany Cooper, the business school’s director of corporate relations and MBA services.
“Speaker’s Edge is definitely a transformative event,” Cooper said. “It’s really amazing seeing the students at the beginning of the week-and-a-half-long course, watching them grow throughout the program as they’re getting constant feedback from these coaches to the very end of the competition.”
The experience helps give students an advantage over graduates of other programs, said Dottie Berry, vice president for strategy planning and analysis at FedEx Services.
“Effective communication is a key attribute that every company and firm values,” said Berry, who also is helping judge this year’s competition. “Speaker’s Edge is an important and unique program that results in better prepared Ole Miss MBA graduates”
The event features short informative speeches and a seven-minute “ethical dilemma” for which students only have 30 minutes to prepare. And for the first time, this year’s competition includes a six-to-eight-minute marketplace pitch, in which students share their best business ideas with industry leaders.
The use of the ethical dilemma in the speaking competition reflects the MBA faculty’s determination to emphasize business ethics at multiple points throughout the curriculum.
Finals in ethical dilemmas begin at 11 a.m. Friday, followed by informative presentations at 1 p.m. and marketplace pitch presentations at 2. Awards are presented at 3 p.m. The student performing best in all events is named MBA Speaker’s Edge Champion.
Judges are drawn from professional speakers from the National Forensics Association, MBA alumni and business professionals in the Oxford community and nationwide. This year’s judges include Ashby Foote, president of Vector Money Management; Bill Chiles, CEO and president of Bristow Group Inc.; and Harold Crump, vice president of Hubbard Broadcasting Corp.
For more information on MBA programs at Ole Miss, go to http://www.olemissbusiness.