Winter Term 2020 - Oratory Now Intern
Oratory Now WT20 Internship Description:
- Serve as Co-Producer of the Spencer Prize Commons Championship speaking competitions featuring contestants from Atwater, Brainerd, Wonnacott, Cook, and Ross. Coordinate with residence hall staff to confirm space, equipment, food and beverage, etc.
- Lead a media campaign to raise awareness of events through social media, postering and other creative strategies
- Contribute to the continued development of the Oratory Now Coach Training curriculum through analysis of videos, self-assessment results and other metrics
- Raise general awareness of Oratory Now programs and services among Students, Faculty and the greater campus community through ad hoc projects that leverage and develop the intern’s personal interests and professional skills
Oratory Now is a student-driven, faculty-directed center for training and research in oral expression. It provides peer tutoring and professional development services, teaches a credit-bearing PE course, and collaborates with organizations across the institution to produce workshops, podcasts, curricula, and community speaking events.
The animating force behind Oratory Now is the peer coach – a fellow student who has completed at least 9-hours of training in listening, speaking and coaching.
In 2015, Oratory Now revived a Middlebury tradition dating back to 1825, the Parker Merrill Speech Competition. It also began producing NER Out Loud, an annual collaboration with the New England Review, featuring the work of professional writers performed by students. In January 2018, Oratory Now founded a speaking award in honor of the late Professor John Spencer – the Spencer Prize in Oratory for First-Year Students.
This internship will give a Middlebury student the opportunity to explore these initiatives and experience a range of professional skill-building that could include event production, promotion and management, advertising/PR/marketing, video and assessment analytics, coach-training curriculum development and more.
The student intern will report to Oratory Now Associate Ben Powers, while also working with Director of Oratory Now, Dana Yeaton, this year’s Spencer Prize student team, and the 50 other active Oratory Now peer coaches on campus. The internship does not require any prior public speaking ability, though there will be opportunities to develop public speaking skills if the intern so chooses. Prior involvement or training with Oratory Now is also NOT required.
The focus of this internship will be on developing and promoting the qualifying rounds for The 3rd Annual Spencer Prize in Oratory for First-Year Students. The award is designed to honor the memory of professor, and former trustee, John Spencer; it was conceived as a parallel to the Ward Prize in Writing for First-Years, and modeled after the Parker Merrill Speech Competition. The 2020 edition of the Spencer Prize will be a highly anticipated series of events held in each of the 5 Commons, building layers of community through friendly competition. The winners of each Commons Championship will then compete for the Spencer Prize Grand Championship, to be held in the MCA auditorium.
A significant amount of the internship will be devoted to producing the Spencer Prize, but a portion of our intern’s time will remain flexible for ad hoc projects. Given the range of initiatives described above, there is substantial opportunity for a motivated and self-directed intern to make a lasting contribution to Oratory Now and Middlebury College in a way that leverages and develops a variety of personal interests and professional skills.
Our intern will work on-campus based out of the Innovation Hub / CCISE at 118 South Main St.
A minimum of 25 hrs per week will be dedicated to the internship.
Assignments will include a combination of the following:
- Planning and managing the Commons Championship speaking competitions featuring contestants from each of the 5 Commons: Atwater, Brainerd, Wonnacott, Cook, and Ross
- Coordination with residence hall staff to confirm space, equipment, food and beverage, etc
- Raising awareness of events through social media, postering and other creative strategies
- Contributing to the continued development of the Oratory Now coach training curriculum through analysis of videos, self-assessment results and other metrics
- Raising general awareness of Oratory Now programs and services among Students, Faculty and the greater campus community through ad hoc projects that leverage and develop the intern’s personal interests and professional skills
Qualifications can include any of the following:
- Strong interest in community-building
- Enthusiasm for enhancing oral expression at Middlebury College. Prior involvement with Oratory Now and/or public speaking ability NOT required
- Facility with Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Wix Website Builder, Google Suite, and Microsoft Office software (or willingness to learn about them)
- Familiarity with or willingness to learn the use of basic technical stage equipment: microphone, PA system, speakers, amplifier
- Self-starter who can work with minimal supervision
- Open to constructive criticism of work
- Detail-oriented and organized
- Able to juggle tasks and meet deadlines
- Strong writing ability and overall creativity
- Flexibility in terms of workspace and schedule
**Middlebury Only**
Please visit go/internships for information on receiving credit (if desired) for Winter Term internships.