Our showcase went online again this semester. Thank you to all the students and faculty who worked through the pandemic circumstances by following the guidelines for our in-person campus classes and online. Thank you to our incredible donors, Donald Sloan, J. LaVar Bateman, and Kevin Jones, who believe in our students and make this showcase possible with a cash scholarship for each participant. We invite you to listen to their incredible stories here:

• G. Kevin Jones is accomplished in law, has authored award-winning law review articles, is a popular adjunct professor of Constitutional History at Utah Valley University, and is active in community affairs. In 2016 he was given the YSpeak Showcase Community Award for his support of the Public Speaking students and faculty at Brigham Young University. In 2006 Kevin created a fund in his mother’s name to honor her, Marie Clegg Jones, the first woman debater at BYU, and to encourage excellence in public speaking at BYU. Here is Kevin speaking about his mother and the showcase. 
  
• J. LaVar Bateman, a communication professor at BYU coached the debate team and taught speech classes. He believed in BYU students learning speech skills and wanted to see them succeed, so much so, that he created a term-life insurance policy to bless the speech program students. Here is LaVar’s son, Kim, speaking about his father’s accomplishments. 
  
• Donald C. Sloan, was a courageous entrepreneur and philanthropist, who traveled the world speaking to some of the well know leaders of the time. He established some of the original funding for the speech showcase in 1969. Here is Mark Rogers speaking about his grandfather, Donald Sloan.