Tom Noonan

Tom Noonan is the Director of Debate at Marquette University and a member of the Diederich College of Communication's Part-time Faculty. Tom teaches a practicum on debate and coaches and travels with the college team nationwide. After several successful years as college policy coach, Tom initiated the MU team's shift toward parliamentary style debate, the fastest growing collegiate speech and debate activity in the country. The MU squad has been award recipients, most recently at Notre Dame and Northern Illinois University. In his capacity as MU Director of Debate, he is also the local educational consultant for the Milwaukee Debate League, one of the newest Urban Debate League's in the nation.

At the high school level, Tom is a former Director of Debate at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee. In his 18 years as a high school debate coach (with time also spent at Nicolet and Neenah high schools in Wisconsin and Millikan H.S. in Long Beach, CA), Tom's teams enjoyed tremendous state and national level success including tournament wins/awards at Harvard, MBA, Emory, Glenbrook, Stanford, EGR, and the Iowa Caucus. Tom's debaters won 9 state policy and LD titles, as well as the coveted Bruno E. Jacob Award at the 2001 NFL National Championship. His teams have been on the national stage at both the NFL and CFL national tournaments, reaching 12th and 3rd places respectively; they have also earned many invitations to the NTOC at the University of Kentucky as well.

Tom is the full-time Assistant Principal for Academics at Marquette University High School; he had taught at MUHS for eight years prior to his administrative appointment. At present, he is nearing the completion of a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership in the MU School of Education. Tom had been the Associate Director at MUDI since 1997 before becoming the Institute Director and MU Director of Debate in 2003.