Skip to main content

Letters of Recommendation

The CSD letters of recommendation process is currently undergoing updates, and the new process will be posted by October 1st, 2021. All students seeking letters of recommendation in Fall 2021 should check back and follow the updated process.

Letters of Recommendation During COVID-19

Following JMU's transition to online learning, students should adhere to virtual meetings with professors unless agreed upon by both parties. In the past, students have been told that letters of recommendation should be requested in person and never by email, however, faculty members are all hosting hours virtually. Your new options include
  • Emailing the professor and requesting a meeting --> they will respond with virtual or face to face time
  • Attending their virtual office hours that are posted and asking them live

Letters of Recommendation in CSD (September 23 2019)

Effective October 1, 2010 undergraduate students in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at James Madison University are directed to use the following procedures when requesting letters of recommendation from faculty members for applications to graduate-level professional preparation programs in audiology or speech-language pathology.  These guidelines are in place for all faculty members unless he/she specifies otherwise.
  • Faculty members in CSD are willing to take requests for letters of recommendation for graduate school until November 1st.  You should definitely make requests in person; faculty are doing this as a professional courtesy to you, so email and even phone requests are inappropriate except in exceptional circumstances. 
  • Students are discouraged from asking for a letter of recommendation from a faculty member in whose course the student earned a grade of B- or lower.
  • Students should provide the following materials in the packet:
  • All letters are sent directly to the program.  Faculty members will not return letters to students.  If a program requests that students collect all materials and submit in a single packet then the student is responsible for contacting those programs and informing them that letters will be arriving directly from the faculty member serving as reference.
  • Many faculty members will agree to submit a letter/form electronically, but faculty members my have individual policies/limits for electronic submissions. Please recognize and respect that individual faculty members may have specific policies due to the large number of letter requests. If hard-copy letters will be submitted, the student is responsible for contacting each program to inform them that a hard-copy letter will be sent directly. Students are advised to verify and establish clear expectations with each faculty member when making letter of recommendation requests. (Updated September 19th, 2019)
  • Many programs will ask the student to check a box which specifies whether the student waives his/her rights to access the letter of recommendation.  Students should consider the message they are sending when the student is unwilling to waive their right of access.  Be advised that some faculty members will not write a letter for a student who does not waive his/her rights to access.
  • Materials should be provided to the faculty member at least 4 weeks prior to the application deadline.
  • Submit relevant materials to the faculty member for ALL programs to which you are applying at the same time (i.e., in a single packet). Faculty members are unlikely to accept materials in piece-meal fashion.
  • You should write legibly and make it as easy as possible for the person serving as reference.  This is not a time that you wish to cause frustration for someone who is writing you a letter.
  • Please give careful thought regarding the programs to which you are applying, as well as about the individuals whom you intend to ask for letters.  You are interested in having letters from those who can add value to your application rather than simply repeat what is obvious from other elements of the application, for example, grades in your transcripts, GRE scores.
  • If you have a deadline approaching, a very gentle reminder is appropriate.  As mentioned previously, this is not a time when you want to upset someone who is volunteering time to you.  Harassing emails and phone calls are not effective and are not positive ways to facilitate the process.
  • This process needs to be adhered to due to the number of students in the CSD major and the number of programs to which students typically apply.  Writing letters of recommendation is a huge task for faculty, and this process is an attempt to make it more manageable.
Appearing on JMU letterhead stationery, a form will be used by all CSD faculty members in providing letters of recommendation for students applying to graduate-level programs.  Students do not need to provide this form; faculty members should already have it.

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