story by Claire Miller
When Debra Schober-Peterson began working in the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic in 1991, the clinic was located in Georgia State University’s Urban Life building and had four small rooms to serve individuals with speech, language and hearing needs.
“In the 90s, we did not see any clients for group services, and it was kind of a one-man show in terms of the size of our faculty and clinical staff and the number of students that we had,” said Schober-Peterson, clinical professor and director of the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic-Atlanta campus.
The clinic has seen tremendous growth since it was first established in 1975 – not only with its move to a larger space in Georgia State’s College of Education & Human Development building and a new clinic location at the university’s Perimeter College Clarkston campus, but also with the number of students and faculty providing services to clients in the clinic.
More than 1,000 students have worked in the clinic over its 50-year history. Each semester, about 25-30 communication sciences and disorders students provide individual and group services to clients, all under the direct supervision of university faculty members who are licensed and nationally certified speech-language pathologists and audiologists.
Beyond campus, faculty have established partnerships with organizations throughout Atlanta, including Gigi’s Playhouse and the Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter. These partnerships provide clinical experiences for students and expand the number of clients they can serve. The faculty and students also lead support groups for people with communication disorders, which has been a meaningful part of Clinical Assistant Professor Angelia Gunn-Phipps’s time at Georgia State.
“Seeing the camaraderie between the clients and how they support each other, and seeing the interaction between the students and the clients has been really special,” she said.
Meaningful Change in Clients’ Lives
The clinic’s 50-year history has allowed communication sciences and disorders students to pursue their goal of becoming licensed speech-language pathologists – a career that can provide meaningful change for people living with communication and hearing difficulties.
Master’s student Kalena Welcher experienced that firsthand during her first semester as a student clinician.
“I had a client at the beginning of the semester who wasn’t speaking any words, but by the end of the semester, he was speaking in short sentences,” she said. “Not only was it cool to see the progress that was made in that time span, but when his mom talked to me afterwards about the impact it’s had on his life outside of the clinic – with his friends and how he interacts in school because of the jumpstart he’s had in the clinic – that has just meant so much to me.”
Jacqueline Laures-Gore, chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, remembers a similar story with a client who made great progress working with the master’s students in the clinic.
One of Laures-Gore’s research areas is aphasia, a language disorder typically caused by a stroke, a traumatic brain injury or a brain tumor that can affect reading, writing, verbal expression and understanding others. One of her students spent a lot of time with a client who had aphasia and worked with him to improve his vocabulary.
“They worked and worked on this one phrase – ‘I love you’ – and one day, they brought his wife in and he said to her, ‘I love you.’ It was the first time he was able to say that to her since his stroke,” she recalled. “That is part of what we do here. We change lives, we make connections for people through their communication and it has a cascading effect where one phrase can really have an effect on a relationship.”
As the college celebrates the clinic’s 50-year anniversary this year, clinic faculty and students expressed their hope that the clinic continues its mission to provide high-quality services and make a difference in people’s lives every day.
“As I’ve been thinking about the legacy of the clinic, I do think that the college’s motto of moving lives forward fits really nicely with the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic – that our goal is to help clients improve and change and be more effective communicators and as a result, their quality of life goes up tremendously,” Schober-Peterson said.