Be captivated as Joe Provencher, Ph.D., the genius behind UT Tyler’s debate team resurgence, recounts how he’s steered the program to national victory. Explore the fast-paced world of college parliamentary debate and see how these students become masters of rhetoric, ready to tackle careers in law, education and more. This conversation is a celebration of transformative mentorship and academic competition.
TRANSRIPT
LANDESS:
UT Tyler’s debate team has competed for decades, and in the past 4 years, it’s been a runner-up in four national championships. I’m UT Tyler Radio News Director Mike Landess. UT Tyler Radio Connects with Dr. Joe Provencher, who left a winning debate program at Texas Tech to come to East Texas and a program that needed rebuilding, right?
PROVENCHER:
Yeah, absolutely. When I got to Tyler, they’d sort of been in between directors for a little bit, and so not many of the students, most of the students were fairly new and fairly fresh. In fact, that first year we had a lot of success with a partnership — Mason Remaley and Ayush Kumar, both of whom were doing collegiate debate for the first time as sophomores there. I think Ayush did some sort of public speaking events his freshman year a little bit, but it was the first time really getting out on the national circuit and going for it. I remember, I got to Tyler, and I went to the first tournament of the year, and none of my teams broke into elimination rounds, none of them advanced. And I was like, oh no, that has not happened to me before. Am I bad at this? Am I bad if I’m the one in charge? And then that year, those two sophomores were runners-up at the national championship, and I was, OK, I do know what I’m doing. It’s all right.
LANDESS:
That is very exciting. And just to go back a little bit further, you said the program was in transition. Vanessa Joyner, who’s still on our staff, kind of helped keep it going until you got here.
PROVENCHER:
Oh, she did everything. I mean, they were left without a leader totally kind of unexpectedly. I’m not 100% sure on the details of that; I don’t know that it matters. But she just stepped up, purely out of the goodness of her heart and just did the paperwork and traveled with the students and chaperoned and served as the responsible university person on all of that, and even though she has no background in the activity, even though she doesn’t, you know, do it. She just she really, really loves the students here, and they wanted the opportunity to keep the team alive and keep going, and so she said, “All right, if you’ve got the drive, I’ll make it happen.”
LANDESS:
She’s quite remarkable. And still is, by the way. Get us up to speed on how debate competition at the college level works. How does that go?
PROVENCHER:
Yeah, so the format we do, which is parliamentary debate in this sort of NPDA or NPTE style–
LANDESS:
Can you give me, what are those acronyms?
PROVENCHER:
Oh yeah, the National Parliamentary Debate Association. They host the National Parliamentary Debate Association National Championships and sort of certify tournaments during the season and things like that. And award sweepstakes for year-long stuff. And there’s the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence, which is an independent organization that hosts a collegiate national championship, and they also track rankings during the season.
LANDESS:
So I interrupted you and I apologize. Go back to telling me about how it works.
PROVENCHER:
Right, so students compete in partnerships and teams of two, you know, so we have four teams at UT Tyler this year — eight, you know, debaters who are traveling and competing, and so they’ll get their, we’ll get the round assigned. They’ll know what school they’re debating, what judge or judges are in the back of the room, and then they’ll get given a topic and then between about 20 and 30 minutes to prepare for the debate on that topic, and they’ll go into the round and have it out.
LANDESS:
Is there a topic on a given year or are there a number of topics? How do they study for it?
PROVENCHER:
No, well, that’s exactly it. So the topic changes every single round. Which means round to round to round, it could be very different. Now they tend to focus around, you know, current events, contemporary issues, politics, things like that, so you can get a predictor of things that are happening. You know, if immigration policy is in the news, we’ll probably debate immigration policy. If you know the economy is going bananas, we’ll probably debate fiscal or economic policy. You know, you can kind of get a feel for things that’ll sort of happen. And what it requires of our students is to be really, really well read, really well researched and really self-starting individuals, you know. If I have to try to say, “Oh, hey, we’re debating, you know, this topic about Russia and Ukraine,” and the student’s like, “Well, I’ve never heard of Ukraine. What’s going on there?” And we only have 20 or 30 minutes to prepare, we’re not going to be a very competitive team, you know. But if you’re, you know, we have weekly sort of research and writing assignments, and if you’re keeping up on the news and you’re following it you’ve been actively following this situation for the duration of whatever, then you know your ability to say OK, I understand, I’m on this side of this conflict. I kind of understand the context, a little bit of the history leading up to this. I’ve seen the way that this topic is being talked about in the news. Now we can kind of situate our arguments and strategies from there. That’s kind of a prerequisite to being competitive.
LANDESS:
Well, I’m sort of trying to picture the profile of the individual student who would be involved in this and had that much required of them at that particular age and that particular point. I mean, what does this bring to the college education experience? Are you training future lawyers or educators, critical thinkers or all the above?
PROVENCHER:
Yeah well, hopefully all the above. Certainly critical thinkers, and empirically, we do have a handful of alumni who have gone on to law school and to teaching positions and things like that. I think that, I mean debate offers a lot of benefits to students, certainly, but it is particularly the ability to articulate and be strategic about issues with limited time to prepare and to understand those.
LANDESS: Thinking on your feet.
PROVENCHER: Thinking on your feet and being very intentional because you only have it’s. You know, when you first get a debater, they’re like, “I have to speak for 8 minutes, that’s so long.” And by the time they’re a senior, they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t have time in my 8 minutes to, you know, to get to everything, you know.” And so you have to synthesize and intake information very quickly and be very intentional and strategic with using your resources A limited preparation time for the debate, limited speech time for an individual speech, you know, and then be able to speak to a diversity of issues, to a diversity of audiences and different sorts of judges you know, and convince them to vote for us.
LANDESS: Yeah, well, and respond to the opposition, whatever they’ve put forth,
PROVENCHER: Exactly exactly. You know and you can prepare and think a debate’s going to go one way, and it can go a totally different direction, you know, and so being able to sort of jump in with two feet and keep scratching and fighting and moving, you know, that that becomes a big part of it, too, being resilient and and not being able to be daunted.
LANDESS:
Well, now for those who don’t follow college debate, your program might be one of the best kept secrets in our community, true or false?
PROVENCHER:
Well, I would like to think true. You know, we’ve had a lot of success in the last few years, which has been really excellent. I think it is a testament to you know, to the students, and, and how, how driven they are. I’ve been really lucky insofar as I think that, being at UT Tyler. It’s almost like I, if I had twice the amount of time in my schedule, we would just be working twice as much as you could.
LANDESS:
Clone yourself.
PROVENCHER:
I’m telling you, yeah. You know students, they sign up for one-on-one coaching sessions. They sign up for two-on-one with their partners. They’re constantly using, we have a little, we have a dedicated classroom for debate rooms so they schedule rounds against each other, even if they’re not there, just to be drilling, just be debating and even post-COVID and Zoom and everything, we’ve, we’ve had students reaching out to you know, competitors they know at different programs. We just contacted William Jewell, and they’re like, “Hey, this weekend do you want to get a couple of practice debates in? We’re getting tired of debating our own school,” you know. And so they’re reaching out anywhere they can do it to find you know more and more and more. You’ve got folks that are that hungry, you know, you’re just sort of pointing them gently in the right direction, right, and then take off, you know, and try to stay out of their way, quite frankly.
LANDESS:
I get that. I totally get that. Now we talked about the, the four second-place finishes national competition over the past 4 years. What’s it gonna take for the UT Tyler debate team to bring home the gold, Coach?
PROVENCHER:
Yeah, well, I think it’s just gonna have to be keep going, you know, keep going and keep doing it. I think if we’re good enough to be in national final rounds, we’re good enough to win one. We just need to to win one, and the only things we can control or how hard we work and how much we’re willing to put into it, and so the answer has to be to keep working really hard and keep putting more into it. You know, and, and try to try to make it happen. You know, there’s, I tell the students that, you know we like to coach and treat the game like it’s objective, like if you are correct or you have, you know, these points that are conceded, like then you should win. But it is a subjective experience. When you’re asking a subjective human being to make a decision, that says this is a winner, this is the loser and that’s. You know, we do our best, we strive to be objective, we work as hard as we possibly can, and you know, and and try to improve. I try to improve in managing them during the tournaments, making sure that we’re feeling confident and motivated, trying to understand. You know, we’ve been reading this strategy this year. You know, we keep notes on big excel sheets and stuff. So it’s like, oh, in front of these kinds of judges, we’ve gone for this sort of strategy, we’re 7-and-2 on it. Let’s run it again. Or you know, we’re like one and four when we kind of have those debates. Let’s try to get away from that content area. And you know I try to, yeah, just keep keep collecting data, keep looking at trends, keep pushing.
LANDESS:
Let me give our listeners some context here. Name some of the schools you’re going up against.
PROVENCHER:
Oh yeah, oh, we can be frequently against the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, Rice University, Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, the University of Oregon.
LANDESS:
These are big schools, and they have big bucks. They’ve got a big, they’ve got big population there to draw from. You’re holding your own.
PROVENCHER:
Well, thank you, thank you. I said there’s absolute gems out here. I’m one that speaks to the very strong high school speech and debate programs that exist around the area. I mean I’ve got multiple students from Whitehouse, for example. I’ve got a student from Hallsville and a student from Longview and places where you know they sough, they were seeking me out as much as I was looking for new recruits. You know they’re like oh, I want to come to do college debate. I’ve heard about this, you know, and they have sound, you know, a sound foundation and a lot of them give back to their local high school programs. They will volunteer to judge for tournaments there. They’ll help coach teams that are after them, you know what I mean? And that is incredibly valuable because when they’re on that sort of other side of the coin, not just being a competitor but also judging high-school-level rounds and trying to coach and help you know high schoolers figure out how to win at this game, it improves the way that they play the game, even at the the college level as well. And so you know, you’ve got students who are that are hungry for it, that are really hungry for travel opportunities and to see it done at a higher level, you know, that are giving back to their high school program that got them here and you know you got a lot of the right ingredients to make something really great happen.
LANDESS:
You have some success stories you’d like to share in terms of your students who have gone on to do other things after they graduate?
PROVENCHER:
Yeah, well, Ayush Kumar, like I said, who was in, he was in three national final rounds during his 3 years debating for me, which is pretty great. He’s working on a predoctoral fellowship through MIT right now. He’s in developmental economics. Yeah, he was actually published as an undergraduate. He contributed to some papers in the econ department here at Tyler and got published a few times, had gone to some great conferences and now he’s doing developmental economics type of stuff and he’s in between, I believe it’s like London, Boston where MIT is and India somewhere.
LANDESS: Oh, goodness.
PROVENCHER: Yeah, he’s like jet set and doing all of that, which I think is very cool. His partner’s got some law school and graduate school apps out right now. He’s actually currently coaching at a private school outside of Kansas City, William Jewel College. He’s working there. One of our great alumni, Skyler Walker, actually went and took over a speech and debate program at Caddo Mills. He decided that he wanted to get involved in debate education, and he’s been very successful there, you know. And yeah, yeah, we’ve got a couple other folks that will have law apps out this coming year. A couple other folks Melody Lamborn and Hunter Parrish who work in education that are teaching as well right now. So that’s all pretty great. And all of them, you know, even though I’ve only been here for 5 years, we’ve only graduated a few folks. You know Melody, Skylar, Hunter, who graduated in 3 years while competing for us, and still ended up in a national final round. It’s awesome. They’ve all come back to work with the team. They come back to watch practice rounds, or sometimes they’ll say, hey, what are you gearing up for this big tournament? Let me see your strategies, I want to edit them or sort of what have you? And so the fact that albeit it’s a small alumni presence from my tenure here, that the alumni are active and engaged, want to come back and keep helping the team after they’re gone, I think speaks really highly to the quality of student that we get here, and I think means I’m making more right decisions than wrong if they, you know, want to come back and keep helping and growing the program. So I think it’s really great.
LANDESS:
Anything you’d like to add, anything that you’d like to share as a final thought?
PROVENCHER: Um, yeah, something I should have thought about, probably, but only —
LANDESS: I’m putting you on the spot, just like a debate coach.
PROVENCHER:
Absolutely. You know that we’ve really loved the support from UT Tyler, from the institution, particularly my chair, Brent Yergensen, my Dean Neil Gray. I mean they are so engaged and fantastic. We owe Vanessa Joyner a huge debt. Again she’s, there would not have been a program for me to get a job at were not for Vanessa. She’s absolutely incredible. The students love her. Last time we hosted a tournament, we named the top speaker award the “Vanessa Joyner Award for Excellence.”
LANDESS:
Nice.
PROVENCHER:
She’s so fantastic. So I would like to just express my gratitude, you know, to the university and to the leaders we have in the College of Arts and Sciences that make this all possible and support me on every way, down to our administrative assistant, Glenn’dra. She’s incredible. She helps me out a ton, you know. So we really enjoy the support, and if people want to know more, get involved. A) I basically live on campus, come just talk to me, but B) you know, speech and debate can be a really, really incredible tool for students in pursuing the next thing that they do. You know, I often say that the great thing about learning to debate is you learn the process rather than you generate a product. And so when you learn how to learn, you learn how you would take information and what’s intuitive and what makes you uncomfortable, and where you know how to be self-critical about where your weakness is and how to plan and all of that, I mean those are skills that can help people advance themselves in all, all realms of their life. So support your local speech and debate. Find kids that are trying to learn this kind of thing, you know, because, uh, you know, at least if they can be intentional and strategic and think on their feet well, critically, they’ve got a much better chance of landing that job interview, getting that promotion. You know, whatever you know making the right decision to figure out if they should lease this apartment or that or buy their first home or any of these things. You know, if they have a process for it’s the pro con. What’s the big advantage, the disadvantage is where, do I see this strategy being most meaningful or effective? I mean, that’s really, really key. I’m really proud that we do that, I think, better than most.
LANDESS:
Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with the university Debate Coach Joe Provencher. To share, listen again or for a transcript of this interview, visit our website UTTylerRadio.org. To be notified about future episodes, subscribe to “UT Tyler Radio Connects” on your favorite podcast platform. For UT Tyler Radio News, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
