Jeffrey Miller is the Director of Speech & Debate at Marist School in Atlanta, Georgia where he has been since 2011. Jeffrey is a three-diamond NSDA coach who was the Georgia Coach of the Year in 2012 and 2023. He was also inducted into the Georgia Debate Hall of Fame in 2023. He has held leadership positions within the state organization as well as currently serving his 8th year on the NSDA Public Forum Wording Committee. Throughout his tenure at Marist, he’s qualified more than 100 students to the NSDA National Tournament and more than 40 students to the Tournament of Champions across all events. His students have reached late elimination rounds at virtually every national tournament in the country. He previously has worked as a Public Forum Debate Curriculum Director at Summit Debate, UGA, Emory University and Dartmouth College. Jeffrey is looking forward to his first summer with ISD!
Location: Carolina
Esther Oyetunji
Esther has done Speech and Debate for four years, competing in several categories such as Informative Speaking, Original Oratory, and Program Oral Interpretation. As a member of the American Heritage Speech team she has championed various tournaments ranging from Florida Varsity State, The Barkley Forum at Emory University, and Harvard University’s International Tournament. Most notably, she is a two time, back-to-back NSDA National Champion in Original Oratory. Esther is so excited to give back to a community that has given her so much!
Amy Cao
Amy Cao is a current senior at Ridge High School in New Jersey, where she competes in Extemporaneous Speaking and Impromptu Speaking. She is a two-time invitee to the MBA Round Robin, and in her junior year, Amy placed 2nd at NCFLs and 3rd at TOCs in Extemp, as well as 4th at NSDAs in Impromptu. In addition to reaching final rounds at Harvard, the NYC Invitational, Durham, and UPenn, she has also championed Princeton, Pennsbury, and her district tournament. In 2023, Amy served as Extemp Captain for her team. Outside of speech, she loves Taylor Swift, watching soccer, and replaying her favorite movies! Amy is an ISD alum, and she can’t wait to work with everyone this summer!
Alex Huang
Alex debated for four years at Durham Academy, winning multiple national championships, including the Tournament of Champions (Gold) and NCFL Grand Nationals, ranking #1 in PF nationally for the 2022-2023 season (DD Rankings). As a junior, they were the Yale Invitational co-champion, the PF state champion, and a three-time qualifier to the TOC and NSDA tournaments. Outside of debate, Alex likes photography, soccer, and cooking, and is super excited to work with students at ISD!
Sienna Vaughn
Sienna is a senior at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, California. She started Public Forum in 7th grade, qualifying for TOC and NSDA Nationals in her freshman, sophomore, and junior year. She has accumulated 23 career bids to the Tournament of Champions and has been ranked first nationally by the NSDA in Public Forum points and the NDCA, winning the Tim Averill Cup for season-long excellence in her junior year. She and her partner went 7-0 in Gold TOC prelims, got 3rd place at NSDA nationals, were California State Champions, and have reached late elimination rounds at many tournaments such as Glenbrooks, Ivy Street Round Robin, Yale, Berkeley, James Logan, UK, and more. She is the overall captain of her school’s 95-person speech and debate team and has spent years teaching Public Forum at over five debate programs. She can’t wait for this summer at ISD!
McKinley Paltzik
McKinley Paltzik will graduate from Phoenix Country Day School in 2023, where she competed in Extemporaneous Speaking, Congressional Debate, Impromptu Speaking, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate. She is the 2022 National Champion and President’s Bowl Winner in International Extemporaneous Speaking, the 2022 MBA Champion, and the 2022 TOC Champion in Extemporaneous Speaking. She is the first competitor to ever win the Yale Invitational 3 consecutive times, and has championed the NYC Invitational twice. She’s reached final rounds at both Harvard and Glenbrooks too. McKinley is also the Director of the Extemper’s Bible, an organization dedicated to making Extemp resources ubiquitously accessible. She is excited to be joining the ISD family and can’t wait to meet everyone this summer!
Jenn Melin
Jenn Melin is excited to be joining the Institute for Speech and Debate for the summer of 2022. Jenn has previously served as Director of Mean Green Comet’s LD and World Schools Divisions and Directed the National Symposium for Debate’s Texas Campus. She has also directed curriculum for the University of Texas National Institute for Forensics and Victory Briefs Lincoln Douglas debate camps dating back to 2010.
As an LD coach, Jenn has been active in the national and Texas debate communities for over fifteen years. Her students have advanced to elimination rounds of virtually every major national tournament. Most recently she has served as the Assistant Coach at Harrison High School in New York where her students have championed the following Tournament of Champion bid tournaments: The Minneapple, The Glenbrooks, Harvard, Princeton, Holy Cross, Isidore Newman, and Newark. They were runners up at Blue Key, Stanford, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania. They were Octafinalists at the TOC in 2021, two NDCA Quarterfinalists (2021), and closed out the Novice division of NDCA 2022. Previously, she has coached champions of the Grapevine Classic, University of Texas, Blue Key, Blue Key Round Robin, Strake Jesuit, Strake Jesuit Round Robin, Colleyville, and Voices Round Robin. In addition to coaching semi- finalists at St. Marks and Greenhill. Jenn has specialized in working with students from small Texas programs and has qualified a significant number of those students to the TOC and NSDA Nationals over the years. The 2019-2020 LD TOC Bid Leader was one such student. She has qualified almost every student she’s ever coached to TFA State; culminating in a record setting fourteen LD qualifications in a single year. Jenn is the coach of the 2020 TFA State Champion in Lincoln Douglas. Her students have participated in out rounds of both TOC and TFA. Jenn has also coached a UIL 5A State Champion and last year’s UIL 6A runner-up.
Jenn is also an active member of the Texas World Schools community. She co-coaches Team Texas. In their first year, they championed the Isidore Newman tournament, earned top seed at the Harvard World Schools Invitational, and were semifinalists at Blake. Additionally, they earned top 32 honors at the EurOpen, one of the largest WSD tournaments in the world. She has coached the Lone Star District World Schools team since the inception of the event at the National Tournament. Her students have reached elimination rounds of that tournament the past three years, including clearing a record three teams at the 2019 National Tournament. Her team, Lone Star Green, championed the 2020 NSDA Nationals in World Schools.
Jenn directs the Grapevine Colleyville ISD Middle School Debate Club and assists the Greenhill Middle School Debate club and Coppell Debate Academy.
Colton Gilbert
Colton Gilbert is a Debate Coach and Teacher at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. He has been involved in competitive speech and debate since 2004. In college, he competed at the University of Kentucky before transferring to Arkansas State University. In undergrad, Colton focused on Communication Studies with a minor in mathematics. In grad school, Colton received a Master’s in Communication Studies from Arkansas State University and a Master’s in Secondary Education from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Since 2014, Colton has been Arkansas’s delegate at NFHS Policy Debate Topic Selection; this summer (2022) he will serve as the chair of the wording committee. As a coach, Colton has coached debaters (both policy and LD) to out rounds at national tournaments and regularly qualifies students to the Tournament of Champions and NSDA. Colton prides himself on argument development and research practices. In his spare time, he enjoys video games on his Xbox and spending time with his beloved niece.
Rachel Mauchline
Rachel Mauchline is the Assistant Director of Speech and Debate for Durham Academy in North Carolina. She also teaches Middle School Speech and Debate at Durham Academy. Rachel was the recipient of the 2022 National Debate Coaches Association Rising Star Coach Award, the 2020 National Speech and Debate Association District Leader Commendation, and 2022 University of Arkansas Communication Department Early Alumni Award. Rachel formerly taught at Cabot High School in Arkansas as the Director of Speech and Debate until Fall 2023. Rachel also serves the NSDA as a Tabroom Superuser and previously founded a nonprofit called debateARkansas with the aim of making debate more accessible. Rachel is looking forward to another year working at ISD.
Christopher Vincent
Christopher Vincent is the Director of Speech & Debate at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, LA. He has been involved in competitive speech & debate since 2004. Formerly, he was a competitor for the University of Louisville where he reached elimination rounds at several tournaments including both CEDA and the National Debate Tournament. He has also served as the Director of Forensics for Louisiana State University. As a high school coach, he has directed several programs and has coached students to elimination rounds at many regional and national tournament including Greenhill, Emory, Harvard, Berkeley, TFA, the Tournament of Champions, NSDA, and others. Chris is currently a Doctoral Candidate in the Communication Studies Department at Louisiana State University, as well as a graduate minor in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, with a primary concentration in rhetoric and culture where he studies rhetorics of space from a queer and feminist perspective. As both a classroom teacher and communication professional, he emphasizes the importance of being adaptable, critically engaging with scholarship, being innovative in argument development, and learning the fundamentals.