How to Get Started
- Choose a prize. You may enter multiple prizes if you are eligible for all of them (e.g. a senior who has completed COLEG 217 may compete for all three).
- Any currently enrolled Hamilton student may compete for the McKinney Prize.
- Any member of the Class of 2024 may compete for the Clark Prize.
- Any student who has successfully completed COLEG 217, Genres of Oral Communication, may compete for the Wright Prize. COLEG 217 is offered in the Fall semester to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
- Look at the individual requirements for your prize. Your speech will be 6-8 minutes for all three, but each prize is somewhat different.
- Come up with your speech. Feel free to visit the OCC if you want to talk through your ideas, and check out our tips and guides!
- For the McKinney Prize, come up with a topic that is appropriate and relevant to a Hamilton audience and try to persuade your audience to agree with your point of view.
- For the Clark Prize, come up with a persuasive speech on the assigned topic:
- Shakespeare’s Juliet mused “What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Often entities (e.g., companies, organizations) and individuals change names; for example, Twitter was rebranded as X. For this year’s Clark Prize, answer Juliet’s question: What’s in a name?
- For the Wright Prize, come up with a topic that is appropriate and relevant to a Hamilton audience and try to educate your audience about it, rather than persuading them to agree with you. For the final round, you will need to answer questions from the judges, but you will not have to answer questions in the preliminary round.
- Practice! Run through your speech several times before you record. Want some help? Make an OCC appointment with the reason "Speaking Competition Practice"!
- Record yourself giving your speech. You may record several takes, but your final submission should be one continuous, unedited video of you giving your speech from beginning to end. Check out our tips for a good video presentation!
- Need some help making a recording? Check out our guide or contact the OCC at oralcomm@hamilton.edu and set up a time to use our recording equipment.
- Upload your video to a service like YouTube or Vimeo (check out our guide for some good options). Make sure your video can be viewed by anyone who has the link, since it will be shared with our judges.
- Submit the Google Form with a link to your video by noon on February 13.
Contact
Office / Department Name
Oral Communication Center
Contact Name
Amy Gaffney
Oral Communication Center Director
