By Emily Thomas
BYU students who are dissatisfied with Devotional or Forum speakers can submit suggestions for speakers to the university.
Forum and Devotional speakers are scheduled one to three years in advance.
'We have enough speaker names to schedule Devotionals and Forums for the next 18 months,' said Kay Johnson, the administrative assistant for Devotionals.
The president''s council, faculty members and students have all submitted names of proposed Devotional and Forum speakers in the past, Johnson said.
The purpose of Forums is to facilitate university conversations among students and faculty about general education topics.
The speakers nominated must address a topic of broad interest from their educational domain. Speakers can discuss liberal education as a topic and use tools and perspectives from their disciplines.
Speakers should be accomplished, highly respected in their field, competent and have the ability to speak in an effective and appealing manner, according university criteria for selecting speakers.
They must have significant material published or have completed other important creative works on the topic for what they are invited to speak.
In scheduling Forum speakers, diversity is encouraged in ideas and disciplines. The university looks for speakers from various intellectual and racial backgrounds to benefit the student body.
In the nomination form, members of the campus community seeking to nominate a speaker must include approximately 10 to 20 pages or other creative works that represent the work of the proposed speaker.
'I did not know that students could submit requests for Devotional and Forum speakers,' said Julie Maricle, a junior from Buena Park, Calif., majoring in audiology and speech language pathology. 'I think it is a good idea because BYU students come from diverse cultures with students from all over the world. It is neat to be able to request someone from your hometown to come and speak to enrich BYU''s community.'
Suggestions for Devotional speakers should include the speaker''s name and affiliation, and should be given to Advancement Vice President''s office in D-364 of the Abraham Smoot Building.
To suggest a speaker for Forums, a nomination form must be printed and filled out. The form can be found through the BYU home page at http://sagus.byu.edu and can be returned to the Abraham Smoot Building in D-380.