The Department and School provide many opportunities for students to practice their speaking skills. Here are just a few:
To satisfy the oral communication skill requirement each student should give a public talk at Carnegie Mellon. The talk is scheduled so that members of the standing committee, the Speakers Club, can attend, evaluate the student's talk, and provide oral and written feedback to the student.
This talk must be accessible to a general Computer Science audience. It should be advertised as ``In Partial Fulfillment of the Speaking Requirement'' so the audience knows what kind of feedback the student is seeking and so all interested and available Speakers Club members can mark their calendars accordingly.
Students should be able to use existing forums (e.g., those listed above) to give their talk, and thereby avoid having to schedule a special talk. Of course it is acceptable if the student wants to schedule a special time and date. The only requirement is that at least two faculty members and one graduate student member of the Speakers Club be present at the talk. The Speakers Club ``robot'' helps students schedule their talks, ensures a quorum of Speakers Club members is met, and reminds Speakers Club members of their responsibility and commitment to attend talks.
All Speakers Club members are welcome to attend the advertised talk. Immediately after the talk, those members in attendance confer among themselves (with the student absent) about the talk. They also each fill out a Speaking Review Form, available from the Associate Department Head. If at least two faculty members and one graduate student member of the Speakers Club grade the student's talk to be ``Good'' or better, then the student passes. If not, the attending members should come to a consensus as to what further action is necessary: to give another talk or to do a ``remedial'' (equivalent to a conditional pass). After a decision has been made, one of the attending faculty members volunteers to discuss the feedback and outcome privately with the student.
If the student passes, the student takes all signed forms to the Associate Department Head who keeps copies in the student's file and marks in the student's records the completion of this requirement. Much of this part of the process is like what happens after a thesis proposal presentation or thesis defense; the focus here, however, is on oral communication skills.
As with writing, speaking well takes practice. Satisfying this requirement might take a few tries on the student's part. For students who are naturally good speakers or are already experienced speakers, one try may suffice. No stigma is attached to those who have to try more than once.