Program helps the hard of hearing

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Linda Kessler / Intern Writer

Cut off from the rest of campus by the eastern parking lots, UNT’s Speech and Hearing Center, located on the corner of Sycamore and Bernard streets, houses 400 speech language pathology and audiology undergraduate students and doctoral and master’s programs.

The center also serves as UNT’s hearing clinic, which draws real clients. Undergraduates take a series of clinical courses in working with individuals who have various speech, language and hearing problems, Speech and Hearing Sciences department chair Earnest Moore said. They observe from their classes and the clinic. Then, once at the master’s and doctoral level, they can work in the UNT and off-site clinics.

“Communication is involved in all aspects of your life,” undergraduate studies director Lauren Mathews said. “Communication impacts every part of your life and thus we are related to every kind of department in some way or another.”

Mathews said the center has connections to many of the different colleges at UNT. It works with the Child Family Resource Clinic under the applied behavioral analysis program, and also does hearing protection for musicians in the college of music. An audiologist collaborates with the electrical engineering department to come up with a new technology for hearing aids.

Students, like doctoral student Suzanne Wright and graduate student Addie Bell, say they enjoy helping people in need.

“The program and the clinic here really helped build me up. It builds your confidence and prepares you for the real world,” Wright said. “It’s really great to see all the different kinds of people we can work with and to be able to help them.”

Bell said the program’s strong reputation helps.

“The master’s program for [SLP] at UNT has a reputation of being a strong clinical program,” Bell said. “The professors and supervisors go above and beyond to ensure that students are well educated about the field and excel in the clinic.”

UNT students can get free therapy and evaluation services such as dialect reduction, voice, speech and hearing, SHC Front Desk Coordinator Kathy Shelby said. Faculty and staff and their spouses and children get a 50 percent discount on therapy and evaluation services.

Mathews said the clinic is valuable to the university because of exposure and valuable to anyone with a relative who can use its help.

“Having a child or adult, any person with special needs, is very expensive,” she said. “So the fact that we can provide our services at a lower cost is really important.”

Speech-language pathology graduate student Claire Zincone works on a project for her phonological disorders class in the student workroom inside the Speech & Hearing Clinic.

Featured Image: The Speech & Hearing Clinic is located at 907 W. Sycamore St and is dedicated to diagnosing and treating speech-language pathology disorders as well as educating students in the Speech and Hearing Sciences Department. Photos by Ryan Vance – Staff Photographer

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