Gary Rybold started debating in 1965. He debated for four years of high school and four years of college. He won the California State Championship in Lincoln/Douglas Debate (1974) and the U.S. National Championship in Cross-Examination debate (1975) He is currently a tenured professor and debate coach in the speech department at Irvine Valley College in California. Since 1992 his debate teams have been ranked either first or second in the national polls for community colleges for 15 years.

Professor Rybold has been very involved with international debate and has traveled to the People’s Republic of China to conduct debate training since 2000.  He has also hosted five Chinese debate teams when they toured the U.S. He was the first certified trainer for the International Debate Education Association (IDEA) to train in the PRC (2003). He coordinated the first International Debate Festival held in Xi’an in 2004, and has trained thousands of Chinese students and teachers in English language debate styles. He has served as chief adjudicator for four IDEA tournaments in the PRC. 

His book, Debate for Non-Native English Speakers, was published by IDEA in 2006. His new book, Debating in English – A Critical Thinking Approach to Becoming an Effective Speaker, is scheduled for release by FLTRP in May 2010. He has published ten articles and presented three convention papers on international debate in China. One of those papers described internet debate training he conducted with Chinese universities under a grant from the United Nations. 

In 2007-2008 he was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship to study the effects of debate on the critical thinking in English majors in the PRC. Currently, he is in China to work on his dissertation for a Ph.D. in applied linguistics at Beijing Foreign Studies University. His research uses a sociocultural theoretical perspective to evaluate debate pedagogies for the development of higher order thinking during oral communication in a second language.