Speech 350: Persuasion

Dr. Lauren E. Ekroth arrived at the University of Hawaii in 1967 as an assistant professor of speech, and within months the Honolulu Advertiser was writing about him. The December 10 feature by education writer Jane Evinger described his Speech 350 — Persuasion course, where students were not confined to classroom exercises but sent into the community to run real persuasive campaigns of their own choosing. One group raised funds for a Maui program that offered free vacations to wounded Vietnam veterans recovering at Tripler Army Medical Center; another tackled littering on the UH campus.

The article captured Ekroth’s teaching philosophy in his own words. “Students would learn more by attacking real problems than by using artificial classroom situations,” he told Evinger. On persuasion itself: “You’ve got to understand the persuadees pretty well if you’re going to reach them.” On failure as a learning tool: “If a group fails desperately in its project, that’s not nearly so important as that it learns why it failed.” Each group was required to write a paper analyzing what they did and how it worked.

The Maui campaign began when a fellow student, Sylvia Cabanayan, gave a moving talk about the R&R project after her brother, Marine Cpl. Albert Cabanayan, was killed in Vietnam in March 1966. Ekroth’s students channeled that grief into practical action — pitching Honolulu organizations one key member at a time when they found that meeting agendas were already full. By year’s end they had netted pledges of several hundred dollars. The article included a headshot of Ekroth — the first known photograph of him as an adult professional.