<p>In theory, there’s an office at Carleton associated with the writing center called the SpeakEasy ([Carleton</a> College: Academic Support Center: SpeakEasy](<a href=“http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/asc/speakeasy/]Carleton”>http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/asc/speakeasy/)) to support students in making effective presentations. Maybe it’s too new of an office, but I did not know of a single person at Carleton who worked there or even got help there while I was a student. It wasn’t nearly as established as the Write Place and the Math Skills Center as sources for academic support.</p>
<p>Most departments require students to present their senior comps project publicly, though the specific details of the talk (length, individual or group, size of audience) vary pretty widely depending on the major. Someone visiting campus will see lots of ads for these comps talks in the Noon News Bulletins in the cafeterias.</p>
<p>In maybe half of my classes, I had to present some individual or group project to the class or lead discussion, anything from 5 minutes to more like 45 minutes. The feedback is usually less focused on your presenting skills and moreso on the content, but some professors will emphasize the former more.</p>
<p>There definitely is no major or concentration focused on rhetoric. I think it would be hard to devise a special major in it too simply because there’s like two classes worth of it taught (“Arts of Oral Presentation” half-credit class in the English department, “Rhetoric: Persuasion and Debate” half-credit class in the Theater department, and “The Speaking Voice” in the theater department). I would not recommend Carleton for someone who was dead-set on having substantial coursework in this area.</p>