The Importance of Clubs in Higher Education
SPP's Director of Career Services, Jennifer Blanck, has written an article for this month's Toastmaster magazine on the importance of clubs in higher education institutions as a means of teaching important confidence and communication skills in students.
The Cass Toastmasters club means business. The members—students enrolled at Cass Business School, City University London—plan to become successful entrepreneurs and working professionals. They joined the club to improve their confidence and business-communication skills. Cass Toastmasters was formed for this very reason—for the business students to hone their public speaking and leadership skills. “Toastmasters’ supportive environment allows members to test and experiment with their speaking and leadership styles at no or minimal cost, which helps us to avoid paying for our mistakes in the competitive business world,” says club member Louise Luo, CC, CL. Cass Toastmasters is not alone. The Krannert Graduate Toastmasters club, at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management in West Lafayette, Indiana, was founded “with immense excitement from the faculty, staff and the student body,” says club member Debdeep Roy. “Our mission was to integrate business communication with public speaking, as well as with leadership-skill development, in a safer environment.”
Examples of other business school-affiliated clubs include the Toastmasters @ MIT club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management; Odette School of Business Toastmasters at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada; and RSB Toastmasters at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These and other business schools are benefiting by having Toastmasters clubs on campus to augment the curricular and extracurricular options designed to strengthen students’ speaking and leadership skills. And there’s a very good reason: Research shows that communication and leadership skills are at the top of employers’ lists across the globe.
