We are the University of Houston’s Speech & Debate Program. Housed in the Honors College, our goals are competitive success, campus engagement, and community building.

If you are a current UH student interested in joining the team, you can find more information on our join page here.

Our Mission

The University of Houston Speech & Debate Program is the home of competitive speech and debate on campus. A co-curricular program of the Honors College, it harnesses the competitive energy of UH undergraduates to engage them in research, argumentation, and leadership on the grand challenges facing contemporary society. As a high-impact key engagement activity, its strategic goals are to cultivate competitive success, encourage campus engagement, and foster community building across Houston and beyond.

Our History

The Policy Debate team participates in NDT-CEDA style intercollegiate competition, where the University of Houston has a long tradition of excellence. The debate team first attended the National Debate Tournament in 1951 and has since been invited to the NDT twenty-three times. Our debaters have garnered three first-speaker awards, one second speaker, a second and a third-place finish, and have been one of the top-two seeds for elimination rounds five times. In 2014, UH claimed the seventh speaker, second-seed in elims, and advanced to the Elite Eight.