The UH Honors Debate Workshop evolved from the workshop that was hosted in conjunction with the Houston Urban Debate League and the UH Honors Debate Team that was held for the past several years. Both parties feel that all students, both those associated with HUDL and those not in a UDL will benefit from interacting with each other and competing against each other. We are committed to bringing down the barriers between the UDL community and the broader high school forensics community.
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We are committed to an inclusive experience. We will work with UDLs that want to send groups of students to the workshop. We can also work with individuals. If you need financial assistance, contact us at sahall4@cougarnet.uh.edu |
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We believe that students benefit most when exposed to a variety of instructors. We will pair teaching teams to ensure that all students are exposed to both experienced professionals in their program area and recent graduates who enjoyed competitive success in the event. Our faculty represents some of the best professionals and recent graduates across the country. |
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We believe that students will get the most out of their experience when there is a balance between academics and fun. While this is first and foremost an intensive academic workshop, we do build in some free time and activities into the schedule, including a workshop-wide cookout one night and a free day on the middle Sunday. |
Rob Glass is the director of debate in the Honors College. Before coming to the University of Houston, he worked with a number of high schools and colleges on the East Coast, including Stuyvesant High School, Binghamton University, Mamaroneck High School, and the University of Rochester. He is also a leading contributor to the field of data analysis and debate, including the first rigorous study of large-scale judge behaviour in debate.
Sherry Hall is the director of the University of Houston Honors Debate Workshop and an assistant coach of the University of Houston Debate Team.
With a lifelong dedication to debate coaching, Hall served as a debate coach at Harvard University for 36 years. She maintains an active presence in the high school forensics community, where she has taught at numerous summer debate camps and directed the Harvard National Invitational Forensics Tournament from 1988 to 2023. Since 1981, she has been involved with high school summer debate workshops, initially as an instructor and later as a director. Hall founded and directed the Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshops from 2011 through 2023. She brings her wealth of experience to the University of Houston to create and direct the UH Honors Debate Workshop.
Hall distinguished herself as one of the top college NDT debate coaches. During her tenure at Harvard, she coached two NDT Champions, one CEDA Champion, two ADA Varsity Champions, two Copeland Award winners, two NDT top-speakers, and the "Debater of the Decade" for the 2000s. Additionally, teams she coached won every college tournament in the varsity division at least once. Hall was named the Ross K. Smith Coach of the Year in 2005 and received the Toni Nielson "Best of Forensics" Coach Award in 2014. She was also recognized as the "Nicest Person in Debate" by the Redlands tournament in 1995. Moreover, she was acknowledged as one of the top five debate coaches for the decades from 1990-1999 and 2000-2009, as well as one of the top five judges for the 1990s.
Active in service to the broader college debate community, Hall served for seventeen years on the Board of Trustees for the NDT, where she held the position of Treasurer and assisted in hosting the National Debate Tournament during those years. She spearheaded efforts to improve the treatment of women in the activity, beginning with a grassroots movement in the 1980s to encourage tournament directors, program directors, and high school debate workshops to develop ways to make debate a more welcoming environment for women. Her efforts culminated in the decades-long endeavor to draft and pass an anti-harassment policy for the National Debate Tournament. Additionally, she created the Healthy Debate Initiative in the early 2000s to advocate for more humane tournament practices in terms of hours and food offerings. This initiative, along with her gender inclusivity initiative, had an impact on both high school speech and debate tournaments and the college community. Her service was recognized at the National Debate Tournament where she was awarded the Lucy Keele Award for Outstanding Service to the Community in 2024.
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7:30 a.m. Breakfast 8:30 a.m. Morning session 12:00 p.m. Lunch break 1:00 p.m. Afternoon session 5:00 p.m. Dinner break 6:30 p.m. Evening session/Study Hall 9:00 p.m. Evening Social Activities, commuter sign-out 10:00 p.m. (Residents) Mandatory rollcall 11:00 p.m. (Residents) Room-check at door; stay on floor 12:00 a.m. (Residents) Room-check at door; lights out
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