Council of Forensic Organizations

The Council of Forensic Organizations is an intercollegiate organization consisting of representatives of various national speech and debate organizations. COFO was started in 1984 to increase dialogue between the organizations. One of the main purposes of COFO was to create a national tournament calendar. However, COFO has also become involved with general issues related to the intercollegiate speech and debate communities.

Information about joining college programs, and reasons to be in college forensics:

• 2009-2010 Intercollegiate Forensics Calendar (updated January 24, 2010)
• Allen Louden's guide to selecting a college debate program (also lots of good information for individual events as well)
• Other items will soon be added.

The Individual Events Summit and Developmental Conference will take place August 5-7, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Express, Bloomington, Minnesota. The conference The conference will be a forum for active coaches, directors and students, to examine commonality and the development of assessment guidelines for forensic programs and tournaments. The energetic participation of all members of the individual events community - present and past – who find virtue in the power of forensic education are encouraged to attend. Registration and other conference materials will be forthcoming.

COFO has web resources housed both at Bethel University and Minnesota State University-Mankato. What's currently on the site:

• Bethel's web resources: This site (with further content), nationals calendars
• MSU-Mankato's web resources: COFO tournament calendar (a tournament calendar for various local/regional tournaments -- note, some organizations such as AFA, CEDA, IPDA, NEDA,and NPDA maintain their own calendars. Some of the other organizational calendars are integrated into the NFA calendar.)
  

Here's a partial list of some of the items coming to the COFO site:

1. Links to promotion and tenure documents and guides for directors of forensics.
2. Information about starting forensics programs at colleges and universities.
3. Links to rules of various organizations.
4. Links to college programs with websites.

Suggestions for additional content for the COFO website are gratefully appreciated,