About The Authors

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sean Bennett is the Director of Forensics for Starr's Mill High School in Peachtree City, Georgia. He is currently serving as Vice-president of the Georgia Forensic Coaches Association and sits on the NFL district committee for the Georgia Southern Peach District. In his first four years of coaching, Sean has qualified twenty-nine students for the NFL National Debate Tournament; qualifying twelve students for the NFL Nationals held in Salt Lake City last year. For the last three years, Sean has coached the Georgia State Champion in Extemporaneous Speaking, and his Public Forum teams have gone undefeated in the state of Georgia. Sean is a full-time instructor at the CDE National Debate Institute. He also publishes annually for the NFHS Speech, Debate, and Theatre Association and maintains www.starrsmilldebate.com, a resource for public speaking, Public Forum Debate, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate.

Victoria Fetterman is a first-year student at Hofstra University School of Law and the recipient of a full-tuition scholarship and a fellowship in Child and Family Advocacy. She graduated with full honors from the University of Notre Dame, where she majored in Psychology and Government and minored in Middle Eastern Studies. Victoria and her debate partner finished 6th out of 300 teams in the 2003 NPDA national debate tournament – the best finish in Notre Dame debate history and the best finish by a female/female team at the tournament. In high school, Victoria achieved such distinctions as the semi-finals of Emory and octa-finals of the TOC.

Roberta Hyland is the Lincoln Douglas debate coach at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. She is currently Vice-President for Lincoln Douglas debate of the Washington-Arlington Catholic Forensic League, and is a member of the NCFL Grand National LD Tabulation staff. Her debaters at have participated in the elimination rounds of the Wake Forest, Princeton and Harvard tournaments, numerous regional tournaments and those of the National Catholic Forensic League Grand National Championship.

Jenn Larson will graduate from Creighton University in May, 2006 with undergraduate degrees in math and political science. She debated for Millard West High School (Omaha, NE) and finished her career by winning the Tournament of Champions in 2002. Since high school, she spent two years as an assistant coach for Edina High School and is now in her second year of assistant coaching for Fremont High School. To make sure that debate stays in her life year-round, she has also worked as an instructor at the Kentucky National Debate Institute for three summers, and at the Nebraska Debate Institute for two.

Minh A. Luong teaches in the Ethics, Politics, and Economics program and is Assistant Director of International Security Studies at Yale University. He previously served a two-year term as International Affairs Council Fellow at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. He teaches courses on privacy and civil liberties, espionage and economic intelligence, grand strategy, and international relations. Prof. Luong has appeared on major television and radio news networks, has been quoted in newspapers internationally, and lectures around the world on international security as well as intelligence issues. A former high school and college debate coach, Prof. Luong served as the founding curriculum director at the Lincoln-Douglas debate institutes at Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, NFC-Austin, and the National Debate Forum. He directs the Ivy Scholars Program for Lincoln-Douglas debaters at Yale (www.yale.edu/ivyscholars) and is the volunteer director of the National Debate Education Project, a public service organization that conducts weekend debate seminars around the country. Prof. Luong can be reached at . Heather Mecham, M.A. provided research assistance in preparing the resource list.

Brent McKibbin has been coaching and judging policy and LD for several Nebraska schools for the past 15 years, most recently running the Millard West High School policy program. He has coached numerous NFL and TOC qualifiers as well as state champions in both events. Brent was also the recipient of the 1996 Walter Ulrich Award for work as an outstanding debate critic in Lincoln Douglas. He is currently helping coach students at Fremont High School and works as a reinsurance specialist for Lincoln Benefit Life.

Matt Molsen graduated from Lincoln East High School in 1995 after competing in both Lincoln-Douglas debate and policy. From 1995 to 1998 he was an assistant coach for Lincoln East becoming the head coach in 1998. He resigned as the head coach in 2001 to pursue a clerkship with the Nebraska Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General though he continued as an assistant coach through the remaining two years of law school while also clerking. Currently he is a prosecuting attorney for the Hall County Attorney's office in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Fred Robertson is the debate coach at Fremont High School in Fremont, Nebraska, where he has been coaching and teaching for 19 years. He has worked with dozens of Lincoln Douglas and policy debaters who have qualified for the NFL, NCFL and TOC national tournaments. Robertson has been a member of the NFL LD wording committee for eight of the last nine years, and has written an article about value/criterion debate in Lincoln Douglas for the NFL's Rostrum magazine as well as topic analysis for the NFHS Lincoln-Douglas Debate Manual.

J. J. Rodriguez competed in late elimination rounds of major national and international tournaments including Oxford, Cambridge, and the World Universities Debating Championships; runner up at the 2000 World Championships in Sydney, Australia; former Associate Director of Forensics at the University of La Verne; Instructor at Iowa's National Summer Institute in Forensics; Director of Forensics at San Marino High School; Director of the newly formed Institute for Critical Forensics.

Ahren Starr currently splits time between studying Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and working as an Administrative Assistant for the Nebraska Statewide Independent Living Council. He is committed to the advancement and protection of individual rights and plans to become an advocate for individuals' rights. Ahren has traveled to and judged at numerous high school debate tournaments throughout the nation. He enjoys working with local Nebraska debaters during the summer at the Nebraska Debate Institute as a way to give back to the activity that gave him so much.

Mark Webber taught and coached Houston-Memorial's Debate team from 1991-2000. He founded The Venezuelan Forensics League in 2002 and hosted the first ever forensics tournament in Venezuela. The VFL is still going strong five years later. He currently serves as the tournament director for The South East Asian Forensics Tournament in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mark's goal is to help start forensics teams around the world.