Most Iowans take for granted their abilities to hear and speak clearly. But for those with hearing and speech disorders, negotiating our busy world can be challenging.
The Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders?part of the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences?offers them a place to turn.
The department is one of the nation's premier centers offering treatment, conducting research, and teaching professionals in speech and hearing sciences. Its graduate programs in Speech-Language Pathology and in Audiology are ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, by U.S. News & World Report.
The department's Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Clinic has served Iowans?adults and children?for more than 60 years. In 2011, almost 800 Iowans received care in the Department's clinics.
FYI
In addition to its clinics on the UI campus, the Department serves Iowans through innovative outreach programs, including summer camps for kids who stutter and a summer preschool program to promote spoken language skills in children with hearing loss.
DID YOU KNOW?
The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is the UI's largest college, with almost 50 departments and programs in the performing and fine arts, humanities, social sciences, and mathematical and natural sciences. Almost all UI undergraduates are first admitted to the College to develop the fundamental skills and knowledge that will prepare them for courses in their major, and more than 70 percent of all UI undergraduates go on to earn a degree in one of the college's nearly 60 majors. This academic year, the college is teaching almost 15,000 undergraduate students (about 75 percent of the UI's total), including more than 8,600 from across Iowa, and will award more than 3,000 undergraduate degrees.
What's the good word?
Today's aspiring journalists must be more than just good news writers?they must be innovative strategic communicators, able to work across many technological platforms for diverse employers.
In Iowa, the demand for such skills is higher than ever, as news outlets, companies, and nonprofit organizations seek well-educated communicators to help them navigate the media landscape and be heard.
The School of Journalism and Mass Communication - a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - is preparing Iowans of all ages to meet those demands and develop skills as communicators. For example:
* Elementary: The school offers free summer Iowa Journalism Academies to students from Des Moines and Davenport. More than 1,000 students have participated during the program's 13 years.
* High school: The school hosts the Iowa chapter of Quill and Scroll, the national high-school honor society for journalism; helping teachers in more than 300 Iowa high schools incorporate journalism instruction into the curriculum.
* College: Half of the school's undergraduate students are from Iowa. During the 2010-2011 academic year, the school gave more than $87,000 in scholarships to students from Iowa. Its students regularly meet with, intern at, and work for hundreds of Iowa-based companies and organizations in cities and towns throughout Iowa.
* Continuing Education: The school offers graduate-level courses at Des Moines's John and Mary Pappajohn Education Center and online. It hopes to offer an online master's program in strategic communications for working professionals.
DID YOU KNOW?
For the 2010-2011 school year, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences had a 92 percent placement rate in jobs or graduate schools for graduating seniors. Fifty-six percent of those who accepted job offers did so in Iowa. There are more than 48,000 alumni of the college living in Iowa, bringing their education, knowledge, and leadership into communities and professions across the state.
