Programs of Study

Just as there is a course of study in our universities, there is a well thought out path at The Buckley School for people who want to improve their speaking and writing:

 

The Buckley School also offers custom training:

--- Call for more information ---

The Executive Seminar in Communication Skills

   Flagship course designed for middle, senior, and top executives & professionals

The 2 1/2 day workshop eliminates fear, promotes brevity and clarity, and produces stylish and persuasive speakers. Limited to no more than 14 participants, the program is conducted at the Buckley School in Camden by Mr. Buckley and his expert faculty.

You benefit from:
  • 19 hours of expert practical instruction, of which 11 or more hours you are on your feet performing
  • defending yourself in television interview and press conference situations
  • a superb faculty, all trained personally by Reid Buckley, plus guest pros in writing, speaking, press relations, television, and business
  • a take-home kit of valuable reference materials, including a personally inscribed copy of Speaking in Public: Buckley's Techniques for Winning Arguments & Getting Your Point Across
  • a handsome (and much prized) certificate of accomplishment, which singles you out as one of the select cadre (only 168 annually are accepted) to have dared to become better than you ever believed was possible
  • a DVD of your performances in all the training exercises--invaluable for continuing self-instruction at home and a wonderful way to delight family and friends
  • an invitation to join the Buckley School presentation and debate society (the "Forensic Society"), membership in which offers students continuing support at low cost as well as discounts on private coaching and other programs
  • a detailed follow-up written critique with precise recommendations regarding your platform personality, strengths and weaknesses, and what to do to eliminate the second while reinforcing the first is optional for an additional fee

Programs held in conjunction with the Executive Seminar:

The Executive Seminar, Organization of Materials, Writing to Make Your Point and Executive Ettiquette are taught on consecutive days, making it possible to complete them all in one visit to the Buckley School.

Discounts are available to students who register for all three.


Organization of Materials Workshop

This 3-hour workshop is taught personally by Reid Buckley (in his home) on the morning of the Executive Seminar.

This remarkable three hours with Reid will give you the processes and disciplines that are essential to organizing and delivering the most effective written and oral communication. The workshop builds on Reid's principle that you can only speak as well as you write. To succeed at both, you must hone your ability to organize your materials and thoughts. At the conclusion, you will learn how to answer tough questions on the spot in lucent and cogent fashion."

"I've been a business writer and speaker for 30 years. The Organization of Materials Workshop gave me the missing links I needed to make my writing and speeches focused and organized to ensure that my message is understood and long lasting." NEIL DUCOFF, Founder & CEO STRATEGIES PUBLISHING GROUP, INC.

--- Call for more information ---

Writing to Make Your Point Workshop: Wit, Style & Persuasion

This scintillating 1-day crash course was handcrafted for the Buckley School of Written Expression by nationally syndicated columnist and USA Today feature writer Kathleen Parker, who taught it through May of 2002. It is now taught by veteran newspaper journalist Bill McDonald and other professionals selected for their talents as writers and teachers, with a prolegomenon (this IS a Buckley School program) by Reid Buckley. No more than six participants are admitted, who are shown how to clean up turbid commercial and professional prose. The course takes place on Tuesday before each Executive Seminar.

--- Call for more information ---

• Executive Etiquette --- The Next Step

We’ve had a number of clients raise the delicate question of how executives should present themselves apart from ordinary contacts made during the business day. They have also mentioned insecurities relating to the critical moments of first contact with potential clients and other business associates. And a few have expressed concern about moving from the peripheries to corporate centers, and what may be expected of them in these new circumstances.

Others have brought these matters up because people in their companies (often new hires) need polishing.

In conjunction with Caroline Avinger of Protocol, LLC, we are offering a one-day workshop entitled Executive Etiquette---the Next Step. The course is designed to help handle a variety of difficult social situations---from business meetings and interviews to receptions and dinners---with confident urbanity. Instructional talks are interspersed with audience participation and hands-on exercises. Completing the course will give graduates an edge that differentiates them from the merely smart or talented.

For more information, E-Mail or telephone Pamela Schreiner:
--- Pam@buckleyschool.com or 1-800-344-4681 ---

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• The Advanced Seminar in Communication Skills

For those who have completed The Executive Seminar and have practiced those techniques for one year, the Buckley School offers this two-day advanced program. Heightening the powers of persuasion is what this course is all about. Speakers concentrate on the fine points of oratory, enhancing their platform presence. Conferees conclude by preparing, rehearsing and presenting a speech on a topic of their choice.

--- For more information, telephone Karen Kalutz: 1-800-344-4681 ---

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Disciplined Thinking Seminar in Communication Skills

The 10th Biannual Disciplined Thinking Seminar for Honorable Graduates of the Buckley School Executive Seminar and Other Luminaries will take place beginning Wednesday 6 April 2011 at 9:00 A.M. and ending Friday 8 April at 12:45 P.M. with an alfresco luncheon, weather permitting.

The theme for the entire conference is: WHAT CAN BE DONE TO KEEP LEVIATHAN IN CHECK AND PRESERVE SOME FEW REPULBLICAN LIBERTIES IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD OF MASS AND INSTANT COMMUNICATIONS?

The debate topic will be: Resolved: THE ERA OF SMALL GOVERNMENT IS OVER, AMIGOS.

Visiting scholars leading discussions and participating in the debate will be: Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law, Notre Dame, and Bradford P. Wilson, Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton. Visiting dignitaries indulging in heated discussions and formally debating on Thursday 7 April will be Christopher Taylor Buckley and Brent Bozell III. Seminar director is Pamela Schreiner of the Buckley School of Thought, Reflection, and Communications. ADDRESS ALL INQUIRIES AND YOUR REGISTRATIONS TO HER. (Reid Buckley's function will be to set our visiting scholars and dignitaries right on all scores and at all times.)

This seminar is designed for intellectually active persons. THE FIRST FOURTEEN GRADUATES TO SIGN UP WILL BE INVITED TO DEBATE THE RESOLUTION. Be one of them! Others will participate in all classes, discussions, and events other than the Debate.

The keynote speaker, a most wonderful and eminent public figure, will be announced later.

For more information, E-Mail or telephone Pamela Schreiner:
--- Pam@buckleyschool.com or 1-800-344-4681 ---

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The Excalibur Young Executive Workshop - New for Young Professionals & a Memorable Gift for Graduates

A condensed version of The Executive Seminar, The Excalibur Young Executive Workshop was created for entry level executives and recent graduates. Excalibur is conducted by the Buckley School faculty and provides training in speech preparation. It stresses economy, clarity, and persuasiveness, putting polish on young executives and professionals. By design, Excalibur seminars are both intensive and economical. Seminars can travel to companies, further reducing both the time and expense of training.

For individuals, and for companies with only a few employees to train, the Buckley School offers open Young Executive workshops in Camden several times a year.

Excalibur participants receive:

  • 1 ½ days of instruction in speaking and writing, with both extemporaneous and rehearsed performance opportunities
  • Hands-on instruction in classes limited to 10 participants, conducted by two coaches from the Buckley School faculty

If you perfer, the workshop can come to you and your company

The Excalibur Young Executive On-site Workshop

For years, CEO’s in our Executive Seminars have asked whether we could bring a similar program to their companies. The Excalibur Young Executive Workshop is that program. Ideal for young executives and professionals, Excalibur can also be adapted or expanded to meet a company's needs - as, for example, to include a writing course or media training. Excalibur is conducted by experienced Buckley School faculty. Using methods similar to those used in The Executive Seminar, the basic program focuses on instilling the principles of public speaking and clear expression.

--- For more information telephone Karen Kalutz: 1-800-344-4681 ---

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Other Seminars

2-Day Professional Writing Workshop - Available upon Request

In September 2004, the Business Roundtable reported on the crisis in American business because of the inability of executives and professionals to write plain simple English.

They base their conclusions on a report by the blue ribbon National Commission on Writing. Joseph M. Tucci, president and CEO of EMC Corporation and chairman of the Roundtable's task force stressed that despite the fast pace of today's electronic communications: " ...the need to write clearly and quickly has never been more important than in today's highly competitive, technology-driven global economy."

Kathleen and Priscilla

This deficiency is costing the economy every year hundreds of millions of dollars--and maybe billions of dollars--in lost time, in mistaken actions, and in bad thinking.

We are not talking here about high literature. What concerns everyone is the ability to put one's thoughts down clearly and concisely, so that other people--colleagues, subordinates, superiors--understand what is being communicated. The Business Roundtable concludes that it is urgent that business across the land take the time and make the effort to improve the writing skills of their executives.

Good writing is terse and efficient. Bad business babble is windy and inefficient. Good writing helps the writer put across his thoughts. Bad writing frustrates the expression of those thoughts. All the hard energy that went into conceiving those thoughts is lost if they are not articulated so that others can understand them. The business suffers.

Any professional or executive who permits poor writing to handicap him is in trouble, not only on his personal account, but in the view of his bosses, inasmuch as business is now presumably alerted by the Roundtable report to the high cost of tolerating poor writing in executives. And any business that continues to tolerate poor writing in its executives or professionals is asking for trouble, big time. Send your executives some place where they can acquire the basic principles of decent, clear, cogent, and lucid writing. Send yourself to such a school or institution.

The Buckley School of Written Expression offers two options:

  • A 1-Day writing workshop every month, preceding the Executive Seminar in Communications Skills;
  • The extraordinary 2-Day (information in this section) and 3-Day (see section immediately following) writing workshops once a year.

Two star writers and specialists in how to make corporate and Hi-Tek mumbo-jumbo clear, simple, and attractive teach this workshop: from France, Priscilla Buckley Illel, prize-winning expert in technical and business writing, who for over ten years covered European topics for such magazines as Smithsonian, Travel and Leisure, and Reader's Digest; and the charismatic Kathleen Parker, 1993 winner of the prestigious H.L. Mencken Award, a nationally syndicated columnist and a feature writer for USA Today and Time magazine.

In just two days, these two pros instill years of writing experience into the class of no more than 20 participants. They inculcate the techniques that make the most complex subject clear, the dullest interesting. They show how the imagination can be enlisted to get one's point across.

The scintillating Ms. Parker, who claims she can make an atheist pray, claims also to be able to make any corporate or professional wonk human. Her approach to technical and business writing is not to teach it, because she is civilized. She says, "My distilled wisdom is that bad writing is bad writing in any field, and good writing in any field should be persuasive and interesting and make little work for the reader." Says Priscilla Illel, "Good writing eliminates the gap between you and your reader…Its purpose is transparent, its construction spare, its railing solid and precisely where one reaches for it. Above all," she says, "good business writing is humble. Its sole aim is to render the crossing between author and reader so smooth that only the destination is remembered."

--- Call for more information ---

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3-Day Professional Writing Workshop - Available upon Request

Writers and media specialists L. Brent Bozell, Christopher Buckley, John Buckley, Priscilla Buckley Illel, and Kathleen Parker bring their wide experience and extraordinary talents to this workshop. Those attending learn to entertain as well as instruct, departing Camden three days later with a style that is free of the g-uh-mmed up verbiage too common in business writing today. Participants confer with both visiting faculty and Buckley School staff for individual guidance in composition and revisions of what they have written until their work acquires clarity and polish.

We asked participants in the May, 2002 3-Day Professional Writing Workshop to rate what they had experienced. Here are excerpts from the critique of one participant (a German PhD and industrialist): 

Priscilla Buckley Illel's Critique of Writing Sample: "Excellent…Highly Constructive."

Priscilla Buckley's presentation: "Excellent…Solid and experienced perspective on technical writing…respectful to the audience and reassuring in one's posture."

Christopher Buckley
- Best Selling Author

Brent Bozell: "Excellent…Perfectly structured and full of valuable insights - a model of an experienced and practical summary of approaches to corporate communication tools…"

Kathleen Parker: "Surpassing…exudes superiority and mastery of written communication - I was enthralled…"

Christopher Buckley: "Surpassing…I was simply spellbound - I have never seen a more perfect combination of intelligent wit and mastery of language…"

Christopher Buckley's Critique of Writing Sample: "Excellent…Quick and to the point - a highly productive session…"

John Buckley: "Excellent…an absolute professional - the link between core message and quality of writing was a most valuable insight to reflect on."

John Buckley's Critique of Writing Sample: "Excellent…impressed me with the speed and focus in improving my writing sample."

Reid Buckley's speech: "Surpassing…[his] 'Ode to Language' mesmerized me…"

Reid Buckley's Critique of Writing Sample: "Surpassing…specific and highly relevant corrections and suggestions…"

Overall Value of Seminar: SURPASSING…A WORLD-CLASS FACULTY…SUCCESSFULLY COVERED A COMPREHENSIVE RANGE OF WRITING APPROACHES AND SKILLS WITH SUPERB AND CONCENTRATED INDIVIDUAL TRAINING. IT WAS A UNIQUE AND MOST VALUABLE SEMINAR THAT I ENJOYED TREMENDOUSLY.
     -Dietmar Meyersiek, Meerbusch, Germany

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L. Brent Bozell Media Management and Damage Control Workshop: A Production of the Buckley School of Public Speaking

Limited to Six Participants

No leader in the public policy community or business today can succeed without mastering the art of communications through the media. The successful television appearance or the radio interview can propel your company and you to extraordinary heights of glory, prestige and good fortune. Fail in that interview and the consequences can very well be…fatal.

The L. Brent Bozell Media Training and Damage Control Workshop will prepare you for your Andy Warhol moment of fame. One of the foremost experts on the media in America with a quarter of a century's experience and thousands of media appearances under his belt, Brent Bozell (shown at left) will teach you all the tricks of the trade.

With special presentations by Reid Buckley, CNSNews.com Executive Editor Scott Hogenson (shown at right), and a team of media experts at your side from start to finish, you'll learn how to conduct the perfect print, radio, and television interview; how to conquer the press conference (especially the one with two dozen reporters out to destroy you); how to avoid the many landmines the media will place in your path in the hope you'll step on one; and how to work with the press behind the scenes to ensure your story is reported the way you want it.

In three days we will teach you not just how to survive the press but to master it. How confident are we of that? WE'LL BACK THAT PLEDGE WITH A FULL MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, IF THAT'S NOT EXACTLY WHAT WE DO. So you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

--- For more information telephone Karen Kalutz: 1-800-344-4681 ---

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Reid Buckley's Orator-in-Residence Program

In October of 2001, Reid Buckley inaugurated the University of Richmond's "Orator-in-Residence" program. It was a stunning success. And it has since been adapted to small colleges that may be interested in an intensive 2½-day course in writing and speaking skills, conducted by Reid Buckley personally. This can be a "fund-raising" special event for colleges.

"Reid Buckley does not simply speak to his listeners---he engages them at every turn. He bridges gaps in experience and ability, interest and motivation. By his remarkable energy the students became convinced that he is 'a kid at heart.' But through the power of his vast array of examples and stories, which he recounts in captivating manner, every member of each audience understood that his wisdom is well founded and his advice worthy of their trust and reliable to act upon…Our hopes could not have been better realized."

       Linda B. Hobgood
       Speech Center Director and Faculty Member,
       Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
       University of Richmond

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• Buckley School Forensic Society

The Buckley School Forensic Presentation and Debate Society provides an inexpensive means of continuing one's education in written and verbal expression. Available only to graduates of the Excalibur Young Executive Workshop and the Executive Seminar in Communication Skills.

Members of the Society congregate twice yearly for brush-up coaching. The meetings are hard work but also convivial.

Every couple of years members congregate in a foreign country to compete for the fabled Trophy of the Silver Tongue. Previous sites have been Cancún, Mexico, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Madrid, Spain and Florence, Italy. The next tournament will be held in February 2008. Inquire for further details.

Benefits:

  • Members of 12 months standing get discounts on further services by the Buckley School.
  • The network. It is impressive.

--- For more information telephone Karen Kalutz: 1-800-344-4681 ---

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