Our Team
At the ÎÄÐù̽»¨, the Debate Across the Curriculum program is led by a team of dedicated scholars and educators committed to expanding the power of debate beyond traditional settings. Led by Director Dr. Darrin Hicks, a leading expert in argumentation and deliberation, and Associate Director Steven Johnson, an accomplished debate coach and author, DAC fosters critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and civic engagement. With decades of experience and a passion for transformative education, they bring debate into classrooms across disciplines, equipping students with the skills to think, reason, and engage with the world.
Darrin Hicks
Director, Debate Across the Curriculum
Darrin Hicks is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and founding Director of the Debate Across the Curriculum program at the ÎÄÐù̽»¨. With over four decades of experience in debate—from his days as a nationally-ranked competitor to his career as a successful coach and scholar—Dr. Hicks has established himself as a leading authority on argumentation theory and practice.Ìý
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Learn More About Darrin
In 2022, driven by his conviction that debate serves as one of the most effective vehicles for developing public reasoning skills and cultivating the ethical dispositions essential for civic engagement, he founded the Debate Across the Curriculum Program. This innovative initiative has since conducted more than 180 classroom debates engaging over 2,000 students, demonstrating measurable improvements in intellectual curiosity, humility, and cross-ideological empathy.
Dr. Hicks' teaching and research focus on argumentation theory, public deliberation, and community collaboration, with his scholarship appearing in numerous leading academic journals. For the past 25 years, he has specialized in designing and evaluating group decision-making processes, developing widely adopted metrics for assessing deliberative quality that have been implemented across public health, education, and municipal governance contexts.
His current research examines the historical evolution of political reasonableness and the emotional dimensions of political conviction. Dr. Hicks currently serves as editor of Argumentation: An International Journal on Reasoning.Ìý
Steve Johnson
Associate Director, Debate Across the Curriculum
Steven Johnson is the Associate Director of the Debate Across the Curriculum program at the ÎÄÐù̽»¨. ÌýSteve has been involved in academic debating for nearly 40 years and believes fervently in the power of academic debating to change people’s lives.Ìý
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Learn More About Steve
Steve has held a variety of leadership positions in academic debating. ÌýHe was the first president of the United States’ National Parliamentary Debate Association and served two terms as the Chair of the World Universities Debating Council. ÌýHe has developed debating courses and trained teachers and students around the world in techniques of debating. ÌýHis book, Winning Debates: A Guide to Debating in the Style of the World Universities Debating Championships, has been translated into 6 languages.
Debate teams coached by Steve have enjoyed significant competitive success. ÌýIn 2002 & 2005 teams he coached won the US National Championships. ÌýIn 2007, a team from the University of Alaska prevailed over 320 teams from around the world to reach the Semifinal round of the World Universities Debating Championships. ÌýAt the 2017 US Universities Debating Championships, the UAA squad was tied with Cornell for third, behind only Yale and Stanford and ahead of Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and over 60 other universities.
Steve’s research interests focus on argumentation pedagogy and the relationship between spatial and abstract reasoning. ÌýHe is a cofounder of Argutopia, a digital platform for integrating debating into any classroom.Ìý
Rob Margesson
Director, Intercollegiate Debate
Robert Margesson is the Director of Intercollegiate Debate at the ÎÄÐù̽»¨. As an experienced debate coach and ÎÄÐù̽»¨ alum, Dr. Margesson is honored to share the power of debate with the students at his alma mater.Ìý