Master of Communication Disorders - Virtual Information Session

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're just going to wait one second as all of our participants are entering the live view of our session today. Alright, looks like everybody is in. Thank you so much. We appreciate you being here. My name is Jen Radwanski. I am the associate director for graduate admissions here at Stockton University and we're so glad that you are joining us today for our lunchtime information session on our Master of Science and Communication Disorders Program or.

Or as we'd like to call it, our MSD program.

The way this is going to work is there is a chat feature which you can ask questions, but we do ask that you wait to ask any of your questions in the chat towards the end of the program because more than likely we will get to your questions as we go through our presentation today. But we will do a Q&A at the end for our live participants. If you are watching this virtually, we'll give you some contact information if you have questions at the end on how to contact us via e-mail or phone and that will be for all, all of our live participants as well, so.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce you all to our program chair for the MSCD program, Doctor Amy Hadley, who is going to be giving you an extensive overview of this amazing program. And so without further ado, Amy, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Jen, and welcome again everyone. I'm so glad that you were able to join us this afternoon for our information session and we will be talking about the Master of Science and Communication Disorders. For those of you that are seeking a degree and certification in speech language pathology, we do have a comprehensive website. I will be talking about some of the features today and sharing.

Some of the items that you can also find on our website. The first thing that I would like to do is share with you our new promotional video that we have.

Yeah. Hopefully that's peaked your interest a little more. The mission of our program is to prepare students for certification by Asha, the American Speech Language Hearing Association, for certification as speech language pathologist in the schools in New Jersey and to prepare for licensure also we strive to demonstrate the evidence.

Based practice principles provide opportunities for continuing education to professionals in the area and to provide direct clinical services to the surrounding community.

We are fully accredited. We had our last accreditation visit during the last academic year. So our accreditation cycle now is through 2029.

And you can find our accreditation statement on our web page.

These are the full time faculty members that teach in our program. So Umm, I'm doctor Hadley, an associate professor and also the program chair, and I do teach in the program as well. Doctor Stacy Castle is an associate professor who teaches primarily our adult neurogenic courses. Doctor Amanda Kobes is the director of our speech and Hearing clinic.

Professor Kelly Muslamic is a clinical education specialist that teaches both academic and clinical courses. Doctor Phillip Hernandez is an associate professor who teaches in the program and also heads our Hispanic emphasis specialization.

Doctor Monica Pavliska is an associate professor and her areas of specialty are child language as well as research and communication disorders. And Professor Marianne Scatterer is our academic field work coordinator that works with students on their clinical externships.

We also have adjunct faculty who are specialists in specific areas. So Lauren Padula, who is also an alumnus of our program is an assistive technology provider and she teaches our assistive technology and augmentative communication class. Professor Megan Mapes is an audiologist and she teaches the audiology course. And Professor Lindsey Lieli is an adjunct clinical specialist that teaches.

Clinical courses.

We use a cohort model here at student at Stockton, so our target enrollment is 32 full-time graduate students each year. So they begin together in the fall semester, and they stay together for the majority of their coursework over the two years.

You can find a list of program prerequisites on our website. They are aligned with the certification standards for speech language pathology, So what Stockton requires is very similar to what most other graduate programs and speech pathology require.

I will talk about those a little bit. So notice that we list our prerequisites by content as opposed to course names. That's because people take courses at different institutions and they may package this content in different ways. So as long as you can demonstrate that your prerequisite coursework contain these areas, then you'll meet our prerequisite requirements. So it's speech and hearing sciences.

Anatomy and Physiology of speech and hearing. Introduction to communication disorders. Language development in children and fanatics.

Additionally, and again this is tied to Asha certification, you do need a course in biology, one in physics or chemistry, a statistics class and a social science class, for example intro to psychology.

Although these courses are not required for admissions, it is beneficial if you have some prerequisite work in audiology or linguistics.

Our program is a 63 credit program that includes both academic and clinical work. As part of your clinical work, you'll need to obtain the 400 minimum of supervised clinical practicum hours required for licensure and certification.

That includes the 25 hours in guided observation. You do not necessarily need to have all of those 25 observation hours completed when you start the program. There is some time to finish them in the first semester, but if you are able to finish them ahead of time, that is to your benefit.

If you've had the opportunity to do undergraduate clinical experience, Asha does allow applicants to use up to 75 hours from undergraduate clinical experience. At the end of our program, there's a comprehensive examination and you will also discuss with your advisor or your preceptor what your plan is for taking the praxis exam and speech pathology. That's the exam that you take after graduation. That is part of your license.

Certification process.

And here's just a snapshot of some of our students at our collaborative research seminar that we hold each fall. We actually just have that Wednesday night.

So what does the program look like at Stockton?

So we have updated our program this year. So you'll see in bold where it says module in social justice issues. So our curriculum has always included issues in multiculturalism and cultural linguistic diversity. However, we have now embedded additional information into the curriculum to deal with issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. So there are non credit modules that you'll take concurrently.

With your other courses.

The very first semester, you have classroom work in speech, sound disorders, language disorders in young children, and there's an application course that goes along with that where you'll practice some of the things you talk about in the classroom.

Neurological basis of communication disorders, research and communication disorders. And again there's an application component to that course, advanced clinical methods.

And clinical methods application, so you heard the students in our videos say that they are working in the clinic the very first semester. So that happens in the clinical methods application. We've also started another exciting thing this semester where students are using a problem based learning model in their clinical methods application course. So rather than a professor prescribing to them what they need to do and that therapy session, they're working together in teams to problem solve.

The best approach for their clients.

In the second semester you take the second part of language disorders in children, which deals with school aged children and adolescents, and again there is an applied portion to that.

You take some of your adult coursework, so it required adult language disorders. Dysphagia.

And you take test. Uh, a course in diagnostic methods where you learn about testing and evaluation methods. And along with that there's an application component where you actually practice administering and scoring some of the diagnostic instruments.

At that point, um, you'll notice there's an asterisk next to both clinical practicum one and approved elective. You'll work with your academic advisor that we call preceptor here at Stockton on deciding at which point in the curriculum is best for you to start each of those components.

Clinical Practicum 1 is a second full semester in our speech and hearing clinic at Stockton, and I'll talk about the electives in just a moment.

In the summer, you do have required courses. There's clinical audiology for speech language pathologists, which at this time is offered as an online class. We know that some students who do not live in the South Jersey area go home for the summer. So we do try to give you that flexibility at that point. Again, depending on your plan of study, you might be taking clinical practicum one or your second clinical practicum.

Which is a clinical externship. You're also taking a two credit required course in advanced culture and linguistic issues and communication disorders that is part of the social justice curriculum as well as possibly some approved electives.

In the second year of the program, most students are off campus at EXTERNSHIPS during the day. You do have some additional coursework, though, some of which is online and some that takes place here on campus. There's a course in motor speech disorders.

Communication disorders and special populations, which covers issues like working with autistic individuals, working with people with genetic syndromes, working with some of the lower incident genetic syndromes that we may encounter in our practice.

You're again working towards your electives as well. You do need two electives before you graduate.

The last semester you have your class in AAC augmentative and alternative communication, a course in disorders of voice and fluency. You're finishing up any remaining electives or clinical requirements. And you do have a communication disorders capstone, which allows you to synthesize the information that you've gained from the social justice curriculum.

Here are some of our current elective courses. So faculty are proposing new elective courses at different points, so there may be additional courses by the time you matriculate. At Stockton right now, we offer medical speech pathology, speech language pathology in the schools, counseling for speech language pathologists, educational audiology management, or if you would really like to continue an independent research, you can enroll in a research.

Seminar.

I did mention that our clinical practica in the first semester uses a problem based learning approach.

That clinic 1 occurs here on campus. Uh. Usually you have two clients per student clinician. You're supervised by Stockton faculty. Your externships could be in hospitals, private clinics, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers. We make sure that you get experience across the lifespan, which again is required for licensure and certification and the externships.

Um, your supervision is provided by external speech language pathology clinical educators.

In our clinic we do offer bilingual services in Spanish and English. We provide both assessment and treatment and we do see clients across the lifespan.

OK, I'm going to give you a little virtual tour of our speech and hearing clinic.

And as I mentioned earlier, we do offer a Hispanic emphasis specialization, the mission of which is to provide students to become bilingual speech language pathologists. We do.

That would be English. Uh, Spanish, bilingual speech language pathologists.

They do have a community service component of the program. If you're interested in that, there is a supplementary application that you would complete when you complete your cast application. It includes writing a brief essay in Spanish on the reason that you want to participate. So one of the reasons we require that is to look at your proficiency in written Spanish. There is a prerequisite course.

And second, language acquisition. And you do have to demonstrate some level of Spanish language proficiency orally with a phone or zoom.

All is well.

And you may also apply for a graduate assistant position as part of the Hesp specialization program.

So, um, the students that are in house do have course assignments infused throughout the curriculum. They have opportunities to work with bilingual clients both on and off campus. They work on a capstone project or a research project. And as I mentioned, there's also a community engagement component.

Here are some of our student researchers.

So our researchers have presented at the state, the national and the international level.

Here are some topics that students have presented on so experience of of racially and ethnically diverse undergraduate students pursuing speech language pathology.

The impact of report on therapeutic outcomes.

Treatment of persistent articulation errors using biofeedback tools, pitch perception of people with and without musical training, and the influence of having a therapy dog present during treatment sessions for stuttering. So you can see that our research interests are quite varied.

We also have connections between the classroom and the clinic. So our faculty works very closely together in collaboration on planning classroom and clinic activities for this purpose. So one example is we do treat many children with language based literacy deficits in our clinic and that's an area that you learn about in your language disorders classes. We talk about the principles of multiple baseline.

Single subject design, which is a research tool, but it's also a tool that we use to measure client progress in the clinic and language sample analysis using salt software. So that's one of those things that you'll do in your second semester language disorders application class that gives you valuable information about your client.

So some frequently asked questions.

OK, our application deadline for this cycle, which means you're interesting in attending for fall of 2023, the deadline is January 13th. You have to have all of the information received by the Office of Graduate Studies by the deadline. We do use the CD cast system and information on that is found on the graduate studies web page.

You do need a bachelor's degree or be enrolled in the last term of your bachelor's program at the time you apply, and you need to have at least a C in the prerequisite courses. We do allow you up to the end of the summer semester before the fall in which you would enter to finish those requirements. So, for example, if you were planning to attend in fall of 23, you have through August 23 to finish those prerequisites.

You just need to be in communication with us about how you plan to finish those missing requirements.

You do need a cumulative GPA of at least 3.2 or higher, and you must submit transcripts from any of the schools that you attended for your bachelors degree or your prerequisite courses.

You do need to submit 3 letters of recommendation through the caste system. We do continue to require the GRE, however, we have lowered the weight that the GRE scores carry in our overall holistic admissions process. We look at other components, which I'll talk about in just a moment as part of our holistic scoring method if you do already have a masters degree in another.

Area, then you do not need to submit GRE scores. I do want to make you aware of our essential functions which you can find on our program page. So all programs and communication disorders have some form of essential functions for admission and retention.

So um.

Although we do not discriminate against people with a disability, we do ask that you review the essential functions and you let us know that you feel you can complete these tasks. Excuse me just one minute.

You can complete these tasks with appropriate accommodations if needed.

So you can find those on our website and read through those in more detail.

So as I mentioned earlier, we do use a cohort basis. Students are admitted only once a year in the fall semester.

Although many of our students have been stacked in undergraduate students, we've had successful students come to us from other universities as well.

So what are some of the things we consider? So we do look at the GPA and the GRE scores, but some of the things that the faculty spend the most time on in reviewing applications are the quality and content of the graduate admission essay. I can't stress enough how much time you need to take proofreading that and having other people read it as well before you upload your final copy.

Your letters of recommendation.

And, um, we do give some preference to Stockton alumni.

This part of the application is the part that we enjoy reading the most. So we call it experiences or life experiences. So we know that people come to us with different backgrounds. That's what makes us a community. That's what helps us to diversify our student body. So please tell us your story in the experiences section.

Maybe you were involved in campus organizations or athletics. Maybe you were involved in volunteer experience that could be part of campus experience or community experience. Maybe you weren't involved in a lot of activities on campus because you were working. That's great information for us, too. It tells us a little bit about your ability to manage deadlines and deal with people in the workplace and schedule yourself.

Some people have had previous research experience.

Have you had leadership experience? So examples might be you were an RA or a club officer. So please spend time preparing this part of your application. Our program does heavily weighted emphasis on what you share in that section.

So how can you increase your odds? Please build a strong resume and write an excellent essay.

There are graduate assistantships available. You would apply for a GA position at the time that you apply with your cash application the graduate.

Assistantship applications are found on the graduate study page for the Office of Graduate Admissions.

OK. And if you have any questions about the application process, you should really contact the Office of Graduate Admissions, of which Jen is one of our team members in graduate admissions. And if there are any programs you have about the academic or clinical portion, I'd be happy to answer those for you either now or in the future. So Jen, do we have any questions in the chat?

We don't have any questions in the chat now, so I'm going to encourage our live audience that if you have questions, please go ahead and drop those in the chat. We'd be happy to answer them if you're watching this from a recording, as Amy had mentioned, our contact information is right there. Grad school at stockton.edu.

Or feel free to give us a call. You can also schedule a virtual appointment via zoom. We have lots of ways that you can reach out and contact our team here, and we're happy to answer those questions. And again, for those of you who are here live, we have a number of folks joining us. You can put any questions you have into the chat.

We'll wait just a second because, you know, there's quite a few people here might give you a minute to do that. But as you can tell, this program has a really great sense of community and and offers great services to our surrounding community. And I think that that's some of the pieces that are very unique in addition to, you know, how caring our faculty are when I'm always telling folks, well, why should you know when they say, well, why should I come to Stockton, my first response is always our faculty. We just have an amazing group of people.

OK.

Where you get a lot of 1 on one attention, a lot of great mentorship and that's for all of our graduate programs, including this one. And so I think that that's just really important for you all to know as you're making your decision on where you'd like to attend to go to Graduate School. So with that being said though, oh, we do have a couple of questions. All right, so first question, do we get to pick our externship placements?

So the short answer to that is no. There are several reasons why our field work coordinator will work with you, and she will gather some information as to where you think you're going to be living at the time of your externship. Will you be living on campus? Will you be living at home? That's not necessarily in this part of the state.

What prior experiences you had either before you came to Stockton or the experiences you had in the clinic? The reason being is that we're responsible for making sure that you have seen a client that exhibits each of the nine major areas of speech language pathology.

Uh, you have to have experience across the life span and you have to have experience with diverse populations. So sometimes the pert place that might be your dream externship site might not meet your needs in terms of clinical and certification preparation. So you will need to have a discussion with the field work coordinator about that.

All right. Great question.

So another question, Amy, you and I can both tag team this answer if you'd like, but the question is regarding the G8 positions, is it required to apply only to those that are associated with the MSD program or could it be applied to those in other departments? So the one thing that I would share with everyone is we do have graduate coordinator positions that are not affiliated with the program specifically, but give you, you know, an ability to work on campus, you know, either in residential life.

Mm-hmm.

That services and campus Center Operations, Office of Student Development are women's and gender and sexuality center. So there are a number of those spaces that hire graduate students and then again those are called graduate coordinator positions. But Amy, is there anything else you'd like to add about the ability to factor that into their time frame and time management?

Wait, so um.

For I'll just say for our program, although the university has been very generous and the number of credits they've awarded our program, we are somewhat reserved in how many we give to students that first semester because there's a work component tied to the credits. So for one credit of graduate assistantship, you're expected to work the equivalent of three hours a week. Now that might not sound like a lot.

That when you're balancing the 17 credits and your clinical responsibilities that first semester, we feel like students shouldn't be taking on too much more than that amount. To get back to the original question, we have had students, perhaps they were stocks in undergrads and they developed relationships with a certain office that have worked as a GA's in the admissions office. Or I have someone now working in the learning access program.

So it is possible as well to be a GA in another office, although those positions would not be awarded by our program.

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Hmm.

I'm going to take questions just a little out of order, just to stay in the same kind of topic about finances. Um. So I'm not avoiding questions, but I want to kind of bolt them together. There's another question about scholarship opportunities and I would like to just let you all know, if you go to the graduate Admissions website page, on the left hand side, there's a tab that says financial information and when you click on that.

It allows you, it shows you information about distinguished research fellowships, graduate assistantships and graduate graduate coordinator opportunities as long as well as all of the tuition rates. So you can see that kind of broken out. But any are there any other additional scholarship opportunities that you're aware of that maybe more are more specific to the program?

Um, I know in the past that um graduate students have had the opportunity to apply for some funding at admissions. I'm not sure if that funding is again available this year.

A small amount of it is, yes.

Hmm.

OK, so is that information found on the website as well?

So new students will receive that scholarship information, um. And then in addition to that, students can also apply for foundation scholarships after they've been here for one full year. And so that's not on our website, but that will be sent to the students after one year of completing the program.

And I believe if anyone is on here now, that is a current Stockton student that if you plan to continue for graduate study, you can apply in the next cycle as well.

Correct. Thank you. Yeah, that's great.

All right. So the next question we have is after we submit our application through SIMCAS, will we receive the supplemental application to fill out or do we have to do the supplemental application? Before? Good news, there's no more supplemental application. So that's something we used to have. We've gone to a new system called Slate. You're actually in it right now. That's what we're hosting this webinar through. You will receive information on how to pay your deposit after your application has gone through the verification.

Process processed through ccat, but there is no additional supplemental application any longer.

So that's some good.

So just to clarify, if they were for example applying to the Hess specialization, is that information included in Slate as well?

I believe that's still all in cash, but we can get that information to folks.

Thank you.

Hmm.

Another question, are there resources available for mental health for students during the graduate program? Awesome question. Yes, every resource that every undergraduate student has here at Stockton, graduate students have access to as well. So that's everything from clubs and organizations to trips to services such as tutoring, counseling, our health and Wellness Center, any program or event that's taking place on campus, concerts, performing arts and Performing Arts Center, which they do.

Offer a discount to current students as well. All of those services are available to graduate students and undergraduate students alike. So wonderful, wonderful question.

And then the last question we have here is, do most students commute?

And you would like to take that one?

I would say about 75% of the students at the graduate level are commuter students. Some of our students are actually resident assistants. So that's another way that you can get some financial assistance by being an RA. So you would live in resident housing as part of that. There is graduate housing both on the main campus as well as in the Atlantic City campus. So we have had some students.

Take advantage of that as well.

And I think the right there for our grad students, they're actually graduate coordinator positions now. So, so that would be listed under that graduate coordinator opportunity that I mentioned under the Financial Information tab. And those are run through residential life and they've got multiple spaces both here in Galilee and Atlantic City as well.

Thank you.

So they have those positions. So awesome. One more question. Great, is the clinic on campus and what population do you work with most in the clinic?

OK. So our clinic is not technically on campus. It's in a Stockton building about a mile away from campus. If you're familiar with the area, it's right at the Jimmy Leeds exit for the Parkway. It's in a building called the Parkway Building and we see people across the age span. So right now we have several adult neurogenic clients that are being seen.

We have some adult voice patients. We have some adult stuttering patients.

In the school age population, as I mentioned, we do see quite a few children with language based literacy challenges and dyslexia. We see children with other types of language learning disabilities and then we have our children with speech sound disorders. So children with articulation disorders, preschoolers with phonological disorders, preschoolers who are late talkers or may have other.

Diagnosis of which a speech and language delay is part of that syndrome. So we really have quite a diverse population in our clinic now.

OK.

Alright, I believe that that is all the questions we have as of now. So thank you so much for thank you for our to our audience for those questions. And again for any of you who are joining us live or if you're watching this pre recorded, please don't hesitate to reach out to us after the fact that you have additional questions that you think about once you've kind of sat down and maybe had some dinner later tonight and you're processing all of this and looking at the application and whatnot. So again I want to thank you all for joining us. I want to thank Doctor Hadley for joining us and presenting.

Material and taking the time to do this. And I hope you all have a wonderful day. Take care everyone. Bye bye.

Thank you.