Letter from Executive Director, Scott Deatherage

Greetings friends,

We have reached an exceptionally exciting, challenging and promising time not only for our organization and its mission, but also for the urban debate network more broadly.

As most of you know, the NAUDL recently hosted two "first-ever" events in Chicago. In conjunction with the generous sponsorship of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, we held the Chase Urban Debate National Championship. Eighteen UDLs, from cities spanning the United States, were represented in the competition. During the Championship weekend we hosted the NAUDL Annual Dinner at the University Club of Chicago. Over 300 guests and supporters of urban debate from across the nation attended. We were extremely pleased with these two events and are already in the process of planning the 2009 editions.

The NAUDL is also pivoting to turn our attention to the launching of several new Urban Debate Leagues in 2008. We have written to you in previous NewsBlasts about the positive developments in St. Louis, Denver, Memphis and Houston. Here we happily report the kickoff of leagues in Los Angeles, Oakland and Tampa, each of which will begin this fall. In addition, we continue to work towards the launch of UDLs in Las Vegas, New Orleans, Phoenix and Philadelphia in 2009.

This growth in urban debate exceeds even the most ambitious vision contemplated in the NAUDL three-year Expansion Plan developed by my predecessor Leonard A. ("Lenny") Gail and the NAUDL staff. Lenny and the NAUDL professional staff, which includes Anthony Jardina, Les Lynn, Holly Reiss, and Eric Tucker, have worked tirelessly to achieve these dramatic results. We eagerly look forward to working with the respective cities' Advisory Boards and League Directors further to expand the urban debate network and thereby spread the potentially life-changing opportunity of policy debate participation to thousands more of America's students.

The NAUDL strives to ensure that rigorous performance measurement and evaluation fundamentally shape how the we do business. To facilitate that effort a research team at the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Briana Mezuk will produce a 10-year retrospective evaluation of the educational outcomes of student participation in an Urban Debate League. Dr. Mezuk's team has received the crucial support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to investigate the impact of policy debate participation on such factors as high school academic achievement, on-time graduation, and college matriculation in an urban public school population. The NAUDL, the Chicago Debate Commission and the team at Michigan are collaborating with the Chicago Public Schools and the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago to conduct the study.

As I reach the conclusion of my first few months as the organization's Executive Director, I cannot help but be optimistic about the NAUDL's promising trajectory toward the fulfillment of its mission. The staff and I look forward with great enthusiasm to the upcoming months and the opportunities that await.

Best,
Scott Deatherage
Executive Director
NAUDL