Skip to main content

Recognizing the Benefits of Research

This year ASHA’s annual convention in Denver held over 14,000 SLPs and audiologists, as well as many JMU CSD faculty and a few graduate students. One graduate student who had the honor of attending the conference this year, Lauren Maher, is a first year speech-language pathology Masters student and Double Duke. Lauren flew to Denver to hear presentations, meet other professionals in the field, and present her research, Quality of Life Indices in Brain Injury: A Pilot Investigation. She first got involved in research during her time in the JMU Honors Program, which requires all students to complete a thesis project. For her thesis, she worked with Dr. O’Donoghue on creating an analog scale for people who have sustained a brain injury so that they could self-report their quality of life. Her research has brought her to two conferences, got her a paid ticket and hotel room in Denver for ASHA, and most importantly provided her with knowledge and experiences that will aid her in her future career as an SLP. When asked what advice she’d give to undergrads she exclaimed, “Always be involved with research!! Research puts you in a position to apply knowledge and make a difference in your field.”
The clinical aspects of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology are possible through the work done in research studies. Being familiar with evidence-based practices and being able to implement them when seeing clients are foundational professional skills. Our field is continually working to expand the knowledge professionals have of communication, and there is a constant need for more research to be done. The faculty of the JMU CSD department is involved in many research studies that have impacted the field as a whole. Being involved in research as a student can allow you to develop a depth of knowledge into a specific aspect of the field, as well as give you the opportunity to work closely with a professor who is knowledgeable in the area. If you are interested in being involved in research, contact a professor who does research that interests you to see if they need any extra help in their lab. You could also consider joining the Honor’s Program if your schedule allows.

For more information on the research that is done through the JMU CSD department, please visit:http://www.csd.jmu.edu/researchlabs.html

Popular posts from this blog

Graduate Student Spotlight- Noelle [SPRING2021]

  Once again we have a Graduate Student Spotlight for Audiology!!! Noelle is a first year AuD student. Hi everyone! My name is Noelle Steele and I am from Pottsville, Pennsylvania. I am a first-year graduate student in JMU’s Doctor of Audiology program. I graduated from Marywood University in May of 2020 with my B.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders. My journey to graduate school is a bit unique because I finished my undergraduate degree in just three years. I started in a 5-year speech pathology program (3 + 2 program) and decided to opt out of my master’s in speech pathology to pursue audiology instead. During my undergraduate career, I spent my time assisting and teaching in daycares both on campus and at home. This allowed me to work very closely with children and thus, I learned how to quickly build rapport with them. I worked as an early learner instructor for preschool age children at Kumon Math and Reading Center in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, which is an after-scho...
Read more

Welcome, Dr. Timler!

             With new students, new faculty, and a new Health and Behavioral Studies building, the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders is excited to kick off a new school year! The undergraduate peer advisors would like to introduce one of our newest faculty members, Dr. Geralyn Timler. At the undergraduate level, she is currently teaching CSD 300 Children’s Language and will be teaching a section of CSD 314 Phonological and Language Disorders in the spring. She is looking forward to the unique opportunity of collaborating with another child language researcher and professor, Dr. Pavelko, for CSD 314. She is also teaching Speech Sound Disorders for the Master’s program and is serving as the new director of JMU’s residential Speech-Language Pathology Master’s program. Her research is focused on social communication disorders and she is looking at how a self-report measure of children’s conversation skills could be used for documenting t...
Read more

Johnny Depp: Actor, Musician, and....Hearing aid fitter?

At a music festival in Rio de Janeiro, Johnny Depp and his Hollywood Vampire band mates, Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, delivered more than just the gift of music; they also gave the gift of sound. The artists along with the Starkey Hearing Foundation helped fit customized hearing devices for over two hundred people while on tour. The people who received the devices varied in age, and their hearing losses varied from developmental to acquired. The musicians described the experience as moving, and the clients they served were delighted with their new devices. The Starkey Hearing Foundation holds events all over the world in order to give hearing aids to those in need. They've donated 1.6 million hearing aids to people in over 100 countries. There are many humanitarian foundations that deliver hearing devices to individuals in third world countries. One of our very own professors, Dr. Ryals, worked towards a cause similar to this in Kenya with HEARt of the Village, a non-profit grou...
Read more