The Other Charter

A College Toastmasters club when organized through a student union requires a student club charter to be a recognized club in the college, and a Toastmasters International charter to be members of and deliver the Toastmasters educational program.  College Toastmasters can be organized by faculty or even as a community-based club but these are under one charter.

Student Unions at college are the primary authority for the charter of student clubs and they coordinate a whole host of clubs of which Toastmasters is one choice.  This also means that a college toastmasters club run under a students union club mandate is effectively competing for students within the smaller constituency of students, alumni and faculty and staff if they are included in the club charter.  This is different from a community club that has a much larger catchment base and which are not restricted by their by-laws, as corporate clubs commonly are to their corporate employees and management and colleges to their academic institution. 

The number of clubs at our college is quite extensive, and this choice is an invitation to students to participate in these extra-curricular programs, albeit with incentives of additional programs.

Those incentives include the creation of what is called a CCR - or a co-curriculum of record.  The benefits of the program are laid out as follows :

What are the benefits of having a Co-Curricular Record?

• Provides employers with concrete evidence of the student's motivation to take responsibility for their learning and professional development  

• Demonstrates the student's initiative to get involved and make a difference in their community 

• Supports the student's credentials when applying for jobs, internships, scholarships, bursaries and awards 

• Supports the student's application when pursuing further education

From CCR Professional Development in Sheridan College Student Co-Curriculum Record Guide

The Co-Curriculum of Record operates across Canadian colleges and universities.  The University of Toronto explain the purpose of their program as follows :

The CCR then has the potential of being a form of recognition for students to showcase their experience in volunteering and leadership when presenting themselves to potential employers. For a student club the opportunity is to look at the program as it was intended in its design and try to deliver on that.  This experience greatly varies between student clubs, some not paying much attention, while others treat it as a way of recruiting students to their particular clubs, but few if any have taken the view of treating it as framework for developing leadership competency or as an extended form of education.

The great challenge for a college toastmasters club is making this program attractive to club members so that it delivers as added value, but the voluntary nature of a college toastmasters club means that leaders of such an initiative carry the responsibility of setting that framework up and engaging the work to administer this.  If students view Toastmasters as additional study on top of their college programs, they do not remain with clubs and there are students who simply join a club so that they can add a line to their resume that they participated. 

The point of a Toastmasters education is that it is self-paced and the learner is responsible for the quality and effort - which means a member gets out what they put in - and with public speaking or practice of leadership, lack of engagement or execution is the learners loss - so Toastmasters is not a spoon-fed process, it requires members to take charge of their own learning.  When adding a CCR program, it may simply be a checkbox exercise if students pay lip-service to it - but it is there for their benefit and engagement is their choice.

What this means is a college toastmasters club should be mindful that it is also a chartered student club . Within the framework of our college, the students union can provide upto $600 of support for club programs and this money is for student club purposes.  This means the budget of a college club incorporated under a student club framework, needs to account for membership finances from Toastmasters dues, but also keep an additional eye on students union rules,  initiatives and support. 

It is challenging for students to lead the club under one charter, without having two charters, but if planned well and with a long-term focus, the opportunity to create a greater educational experience for club members does exist.   It is the sometimes transient nature of students which is the primary engagement challenge, while new students need to replace those students who have graduated and left the college.  A few may return as alumni but this is a handful that are passionate about Toastmasters as a membership - and the challenge of engagement is not pushing programs into the club, but creating the invitation as added-value to students. 

For that added-value to be viable, the clubs leadership needs to be mindful of its members needs, especially the members voice and and this engagement must be a pull and not a push.

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