Here’s to Toastmasters: student group quells speaking fears

When Jacob Leach began attending VCU three-and-a-half years ago to pursue a Ph.D. in engineering, his fellow students encouraged him to participate in the VCU Toastmasters Club.

The Toastmasters Club looked like fun to Leach, and he joined to reduce the feeling of intimidation that arises during public speaking.

Leach has been a member of the Toastmasters Club ever since.

“Ultimately, everyone will at some point in their lives have to give a speech in front of people,” Leach said. Leach said he continued with the club for fun. He is a former president of the club and its current vice president of public relations.

A couple months ago, Leach had to give a presentation in Boston.

“I wasn’t afraid to get up in front of people and talk,” he said.

The VCU Toastmasters Club is a branch of an international organization
created to help individuals improve
their public-speaking abilities.

According to VCU’s Toastmasters Web site, the organization currently has more than 200,000 members in 80 nations across the world.

VCU’s Toastmasters Club simplifies the process of developing public-speaking skills and providing constructive
evaluation to its members, among other things.

“Evaluation is so critical to the success of Toastmasters,” said Chris Steele, VCU Toastmasters president. “To be better, you need to get practice and you need to get feedback.”

It takes a lot of effort to have everyone participate, Steele said, but one of the club’s main goals is to provide for the educational needs of its members.

“It’s about people working together,”
Steele said.

About 10 to 12 people attend each meeting.

The toastmaster of the week assigns parts to the attendees, choosing an evaluator, a grammarian and an “uh” counter, for example. Then, one speaker provides the first speech of the day and another presents “table topics” for group discussion.

In a typical club meeting, the process of speechmaking and evaluating
is clearly spliced into sections for discussion.

Each individual has different reasons for joining the club.

Steele, who has been involved in Toastmasters for 12 years (and specifically at VCU for two of those years), said the club is open to people at any level.

The club’s a good way to network, because it has graduate students, undergraduates, VCU professors and non-VCU people.

“Some people (who join) are simply nervous; some are not natively English speakers. Some people just aren’t familiar with the customary ways of giving a presentation,” Steele said.

“The importance of being able to make a presentation . is critical. There’s no getting around that,” Steele said. “To make an impression, personal communication is needed.

“The VCU Toastmaster Club’s Web site can be found at www.vcutoastmasters.
com. Or go international at www.toastmasters.org.