Forensics

Forensics members standing on stage with a host high-fiving a participant.

Foster Your Voice

The San Jose State Forensics Team (Speech and Debate) is housed within the Communication Studies Department and is open to all San Jose State students regardless of prior experience. We offer a wide variety of events that include Individual Events (interpretive and platform speaking) and a variety of debate formats. The forensics team is a place to foster your voice.

A group picture of Forensics Team members posing with their awards.

Compete to Learn, not to Win

The mission of SJSU Forensics is to foster life-long learning skills for competitors. This activity should be an enjoyable learning experience. If you win along the way, that's great, but our goal is learning. We don't compete to win, we compete to learn.

Forensics Team Programming

Competition Team

We offer a nationally recognized competitive team that travels throughout California, the United States, and occasionally across the world.

SpeakFest

Each semester, we host an event to get students more civically involved by sharing their work with peers and peer coaches. Over the course of the day students are able to share the work they have developed in their Comm 20, 40 and P courses.

Applied Activity - Comm 198 with Forensics

The Forensics option is part of the Senior Project/Applied Activity required for graduation for majors in the department of Communication Studies. Its purpose is to provide Communication Studies majors with practical experience, under faculty supervision, with scholarly reflection. The Forensics option provides students with an opportunity to put their almost four years of learning where their mouths are; to test their speaking, reasoning, and listening abilities outside the college classroom.