The Communication Center as a Resource for Professional Development

Abstract

Many view university speaking centers just to be hubs for peer-to-peer tutoring, that aids students in overcoming public speaking anxiety. Although that outlook speaks of great, inspirational volumes in itself, such centers can also be hubs of valuable information in the realm of professional development and efficiency. More specifically, university speaking centers are overlooked in regard to their potential of being rich and resourceful sites of research. This is proven to be unfortunate as a plethora of insightful information can be gleaned from observing the inner workings of a university speaking center.

     For example, this insightful information includes that of collaboration, healthy conflict management, and many other essential qualities that the students, or peer tutors, employed at the university speaking centers must possess and maintain to ensure the effectiveness of the center, as a whole, is also maintained. These imperative qualities can be observed through meetings of peer tutors, how peer tutors conduct themselves in times where they are unsure, along with other scenarios that may commonly occur in speaking centers.

     Pertaining to this, Laura Ashley Mills, a senior at UNC-Greensboro at the time of her research, went through the process of conducting research at a university speaking center. She discovered such motifs that she found to be vital players in the success and longevity of the center. Additionally, she recognized that the motifs had a positive influence on the peer tutors who worked at the center, which greatly impacted the caliber of help they would give the students of which were coming to the center to seek help. Given this, Mills’ discoveries have the potential to ultimately serve as template qualities for other university speaking centers to adapt to increase their success and longevity.