Teaching to Retain and Recruit Neo-Diversity, Essay Example

Dr. Rupert Nacoste is a professor of Social Psychology at North Carolina State University. He is in the department of psychology and is an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor at NCSU. Dr. Rupert Nacoste’s speech was an open and public lecture on “Teaching to Retain and Recruit Neo-Diversity”. The public lecture was slotted on CHASS’s fall diversity lecture that takes place every fall. This year, it would be hosted at the Caldwell lounge in the Caldwell hall of NCSU.

Dr. Nacoste is a sought after speaker with immense experience in the field of psychology. He particularly has interesting ideas on the kind of teaching techniques that best produce neo diverse students from the undergraduate level, bring them into the NCSU pipeline where they can attain neo-diversity, an aspect that is crucial for the graduate education programs. His ideas on these effective teaching techniques are what drew my attention to this particular speech. The main part of the audience included facilitators and students from NCSU and its environs.

The main points of the speech were:

• Lectures need to be more engaging
• Instructor-student relations need to be interactive
• Communication is key to conveying information to students
• Practical work rather than theoretical work should be the emphasis of lectures

The speaker was very articulate on his points and ideas and managed to convey them in an effective manner. His delivery was particularly eloquent and impressive. It pointed out to the fact that he lives what he was teaching. This is the manner in which he effectively applied the points that his speech was about.

The audience was very responsive during and after the speech. He engaged the audience in every portion of the lecture taking pauses to ask questions that engaged the audience in a thinking process. This was reflected in the numerous questions that he received after the lecture and also the manner in which the audience seemed to be taking notes on his lecture.

I learnt that effective communication is the best way to convey information to students. In order to attain neo-diversity, students need to be engaged in more practical work than theoretical. This is because real-life situations incorporate non-cognitive factors that are essential to attain neo-diversity.