The curriculum of an institute is an important consideration when deciding which institute best meets your needs. At NDF the curriculum is carefully crafted to meet the diverse needs of students of a variety of abilities. The mission of NDF is to provide a balanced instruction that addresses the current trends of LD Debate, but also reinforces the lasting trends that have proven to be successful year after year. This approach will equip students to have optimal success during the competitive season.

Every year we meticulously review the curriculum in order to craft a new and improved set of lectures, seminars and available office hour times to address the various issues that face debaters at competitions across the country. To meet the high demands of our curriculum a qualified staff is in place. The staff represents different regions of the country to ensure that students are prepared to debate in any part of the country with any judge.

NDF’s curriculum is designed to ensure students not only understand the fundamentals of debate, but can execute the appropriate strategies in rounds. To that end, students receive a minimum of 12-fully critiqued practice rounds while at the institute and have a variety of rebuttal redo opportunities in lab and during one-on-one office hour sessions.

NDF centers its curriculum around three groups of students: Junior Varsity, Varsity and Advanced Repeaters. What program is best for you?

• Students who have competed as a novice are eligible to participate in our Junior Varsity program.
• Students who have competed as a varsity competitor for at least a season are eligible to participate in our Varsity program.
• Students who have had a high level of competitive success at the varsity level AND have attended an LD institute in the past (varsity curriculum) are eligible to participate in our Advanced Repeaters program.
• Students with little or no prior experience in LD Debate should apply to the Summit National Speaker’s Forum in Orlando, FL. NSF’s LD program is specifically designed around the needs of novice debaters, and features many of the same faculty members as NDF.

The NDF curriculum works in a variety of ways to meet the needs of all its students:

A series of lectures for each program to ensure students have an appropriate knowledge base centered around strategic case construction, advanced rebuttal techniques and introductions to political philosophies.

A series of seminars where students get to choose the sessions they attend during their time at NDF. Seminars give students autonomy in their institute experience and enable us to offer a variety of lectures, clinics, and skills drill sessions so that the individual needs of students are met.

Smaller labs that enable one-on-one instructional time, dedicated time for case construction and revision and the implementation of sound strategies in debate
Office Hours where students get to make appointments with staff members of their choice to work on areas of debate they are struggling with. These are one-on-one appointments.

A Philosophy Series where the staff offers lectures on theories that could be applied to a variety of potential topics that are chosen in the following year. After the topic list becomes available the staff decides what theories could be applied to multiple topics and we provide students lectures on these theories so they have an understanding of what they say, how they can be used and ideas on how to respond to the concepts.

The Minh A. Luong Championship Experience is a simulated debate tournament at the end of NDF to give students that competitive experience to implement their new debate strategies in front of qualified faculty and guest judges.

While the curriculum is crafted with input by all faculty members, the Curriculum Coordinators include Jenny Cook, Steve Schappaugh, Chetan Hertzig, Joe Vaughan, Tom Evnen, Dario Camara and Steffany Oravetz-Batik.