CSU toasts leadership and communication
By Jon Huff
“The mission of a Toastmasters Club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which foster self-confidence and personal growth.”
Lorna Linen read the mission statement for the Toastmasters Club. Linen, vice-president of education for the CSU chapter, was also acting as toastmaster.
The Toastmasters Club is an organization designed to help members become better public speakers.
It is one of many Toastmasters International clubs around the country.
The club meets the first four Thursdays of every month from 12:15 p.m. until 1:30 p.m. in UC 368.
Each meeting, members are designated to take on certain tasks, including toastmaster, speaker, evaluator, and timer.
The toastmaster is the main moderator for the meeting. He or she will keep the meeting organized and move the meeting along.
The major event in the meeting is the speech by the designated speaker. Here a member who was chosen at a previous meeting
will give a prepared speech to be evaluated. The speech can be on anything, but must remain within a certain time limit.
Once the speech is given, other members will evaluate the speech.
A member will also keep track of any fluency issues during the speech, space fillers like “ahs” and “ums”.
After the main speaker, the meeting moves into table topics.
A table topics master will present a topic to speak on, and pick other members to come up and give a short reaction to the topic.
The members are chosen randomly which emphasizes impromptu speaking, according to Club President Jennifer Stoneking. These speeches are then evaluated.
Member Sandy Chetnik-Norris found the club has helped her with speaking in general.
“You’re not going to improve if you never prepare a speech,” Chetnik-Norris said.