From left-to-right: Jon McCormick, Natacha Cabrera, Gabriel De La Puente, Addie Coffman, Lisa Casimiro, and Jeremy Franz.

Our Business Advisor Dave Stachowiak and Faculty Advisor Bonni Stachowiak coach the team every Monday night. Their duties include filming the students' presentations and giving them personalized instruction on areas of strength and improvement. Dave devised an acronym which describes five fundamental tips on how to become a stronger presenter:

Smile. It may seem simple, but a smile goes a long way to conveying energy and passion about your message.

Hands. Most people don’t know what to do with their hands when they’re talking. One good technique is to use gestures, but to return to a “home base” stance, or a “neutral stance”, with your hands at your sides when you’re not in the middle of gesturing about something.

Enthusiasm. As the adage goes, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Your enthusiasm strengthens your message and helps to get the audience engaged in hearing more about the team’s results.

Eye-contact. Instead of trying to look everyone in the room in the eye, which would likely result in a pretty sketchy looking expression on your face as you quickly scanned from person to person, connect for 3-5 seconds with specific people who are sitting in different places in the room. Having stronger eye contact with 7-12 individuals in the room will appear as if you’re engaging with the entire room than if your eyes flit nervously around the room in a seemingly random manner.

Projection. The volume of your voice is going to be lower when you’re talking with a small group than when you’re trying to fill a large hotel conference room, like you will be for competition. Projection is crucial and occurs when you think about breathing in deeply (your stomach/gut should extend) and using your diaphragm to support your loud voice.

If you are interested in attending the competition this year, or in watching the team in their final practice, please contact us. We'd love to hear your feedback about our soon-to-be award winning team and we hope to see you at the regional competition!