Dr. Trond Jacobsen is a nationally recognized debate educator and innovator who served as Director of Forensics at the University of Oregon from 2013 to 2025, where he engineered the program’s growth in debate and mock trial into the largest program in the country. Under his leadership, Oregon won its 6th national championship since 1969, including the 2022 NPTE National Championship and the National Round Robin.
A leader in debate innovation, Dr. Jacobsen co founded the Collegiate, Advocacy, Research and Debate (CARD) format of evidence based policy debate in 2019. His teams have won many CARD tournaments, including the 2024 Tournament and Conference of Scholars end of year tournament. He is also the pioneer of the Debate+ innovation in CARD, which enriches the debate experience through bespoke educational programming.
Sustaining the top level parliamentary debate program he inherited in 2013, Dr. Jacobsen coached more than a dozen NPDA and NPTE semifinalists and quarterfinalists and many top speakers, including four different top speakers. Oregon debaters have placed first multiple times in all speaker categories (evidence, communication, and community) in both JV and Varsity divisions. He also led the continued rise of Oregon mock trial, which now ranks among the strongest programs in the West, with four trips to nationals, including the last three years, along with numerous tournament firsts and seconds at invitationals and AMTA regional tournaments, and many attorney and witness awards.
As a competitor, Dr. Jacobsen debated policy for six years, including four years at Oregon, where he broke to nationals all four years and advanced to quarterfinals twice. He earned speaker awards all four years, including 3rd speaker his final year, was the top speaker at 11 consecutive regional tournaments over two years, and with his partners won every PNW tournament at least twice.
Dr. Jacobsen holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Michigan and has taught courses in oral advocacy and argument, legal persuasion, public speaking, information visualization, scholarly search, and social network analysis.
