A new special topics course for the 2023 fall semester is now being offered for registration: ENG 295 LECT 02 with Waynesburg University’s Dr. Jamie Dessart of the Department of English.

The course’s specific title is “Slam! Creative and Academic Presentation,” and it is currently being offered as a three-credit course open to all majors. This course can meet the requirements of the public speaking general education requirement – though, it will require a substitution form, as it is a special topics class.

The foundations for this course took inspiration from the monthly Thursday readings in McCance auditorium, alongside Dessart’s experience with helping students to prepare for conference presentations – such as the 2023 PCA Conference that a few students are attending this April.

“I thought, ‘do we teach them how to do that?’” Dessart said. “How to get up and take something that’s written and then read it in a way that really enunciates and like- especially with creative sorts of work.”

Focusing on improving public speaking and presentation skills, Dessart has organized the course into two sections; the first will revolve around reading and orally interpreting creative works – these can include sections of a student’s favorite novel or even song lyrics – and the second half of the course will focus on turning previously written papers into a presentation.

The final project of the course is planned to be a podcast.

“It’s the idea of taping yourself doing a public speaking event,” Dessart said. “A lot of people are interested in podcasting… I’m more of the idea of ‘how do you organize it,’ ‘how do you have everything ready to go’… you know, ‘how do you balance all that out?’”

With her undergraduate degree in communication, Dessart taught public speaking night classes for a nursing program at a local hospital while she was between her master’s and Ph.D.

“Almost everything is verbal – you’re speaking, or it is ‘do an outline’… that’s really what it is,” Dessart said. “When I teach public speaking, we don’t do, like, where it’s all written before you get up there.”

There are 15 seats available for registration, and five students already registered as of last week. Sophomore English major Olivia Sanvicente is one of the students planning on taking this new course.

Sanvicente said that she is very excited for this opportunity:

“I did not want to practice or present my work in a way that wouldn’t reflect my career goals,” Sanvicente said. “I think that this will be beneficial to humanities and social science majors to present within an academic environment compared to a more business-focused one.”

As of right now, the fall 2023 course is a pilot class in order to gain an idea of how much interest in such a course exists; if the pilot goes well next fall, the eventual hope, according to Dessart, is that this course could be required for the university’s English majors.

“But it will always be open, because there’s a lot of people on campus who this, I think would benefit,” Dessert said. “So it’s open for anybody.”

Anyone who is interested can visit the self-service section on the Waynesburg University’s myConnect website to learn more about this newly offered special topics course.