Welcome to 95718 Professional Speaking
A Core Course in Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College
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Welcome to 95718 Professional Speaking. This is a course about developing real-world skills that are essential to the workplace, and to your success in it. We focus not just on making you a better presenter, but on making sure that you have information worthy of presentation. We give you the tools and feedback to help with every aspect of presentations, but most of all we work to give you the confidence and presence to make sure that you are taken seriously in the workplace. Ultimately, that's what being a better presenter -- or a better communicator of any kind -- is really about.
Course Faculty
95718 Professional Speaking is a core Heinz College course that is taught by multiple faculty members, each with their own vision of the course.
This web site is an overview of the course taught by Professor Chris Labash. You'll find his Faculty Bio here and more information at his website. He also teaches 94803 ConsultingLab, and when on the Doha Campus, 95401 IdeaLab.
Course at a glance
This is a core course for MISM students. Exemptions are rare, and are not advised.
This is a Mini (7-week) course offered every semester, including summer.
Over the seven weeks, six to eight presentations, of various lengths, are typically given.
Course content focuses not just on presentation mechanics and skills but on critical thinking, understanding and use of evidence, influence and persuasion, and information visualization.
Focus is on evidence-based impact presentations, technical presentations, and information visualizations.
Final presentations map to UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Final presentations are presentations of evidence around such topics as "Is global authoritarianism rising, falling, or staying at a constant level? Does it matter?" and "Does "school" still matter or is there a better way to approach education?" and "What is the most likely next step in human evolution and how could it impact relationships?" among others.
Presentations are built with AI and then critiqued.
Course emphasis is on critical thinking and the presentation of evidence-backed information.
Everything on this site, and all downloads, are unless otherwise specified, protected by a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND License, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Preferred attribution is (c) Chris Labash, 2025.
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