COSD students to make professional development trip 

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The 2016 ASHA Convention in Philadelphia on November 17–19 will be a prestigious platform for Radford’s Kenzie VanDerwerker and her COSD colleagues to make national research presentations.

Five Communication Science and Disorders’ (COSD) faculty and four student colleagues will join Vanderwerker as presenters at the annual national gathering of speech-language pathologists and audiologists. The Radford COSD party will also include 13 more COSD students visiting the annual convention to learn about the latest research, polish clinical skills and acquire tools, techniques and resources to advance professional development. 

VanDerwerker will be making her first solo poster presentation, a meta-analysis of research titled “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Enhancing the understanding of ADHD on executive functioning in school-age students,” as part of a two-hour session devoted to language and literacy for school-age children.

At the convention, the second-year graduate student from Bedford will also take her place as the National Student Speech-Language-Hearing Association (NSSHLA) Student State Officer representing Virginia. VanDerwerker was selected to represent Virginia’s students as part of the organization’s leadership councils. The NSSHLA is the student organization for the professional organization. Other Radford students will compete with their national peers in the NSSHLA Knowledge Bowl, a competition between chapters to answer questions similar to those on the Praxis exams.

Other featured Radford presentations will be:

  • “Promoting speech-language pathology students' language/literacy knowledge base via analyzing children's writing samples,” presented by Associate Professor Elizabeth Lanter, Assistant Professor Karen Davis and graduate students Laura Lancaster and Courtney Scaggs.
  • “Learning through teaching: graduate students' phonemic awareness following delivery of a focused phonological awareness program, presented by COSD instructor Karen Arndt and Davis.
  • “Leadership in action: Applying the principles of the CAPCSD Leadership Academy” and “An intervention program for teaching conversational skills for partners of individuals who use AAC,” both presented by COSD Chair and Professor Diane Millar.
  • “Verb and thematic role production in Korean-English children compared to English monolingual children,” presented by Assistant Professor Hyejin Park and Andrea Pang.

Millar said the entire COSD traveling party will benefit from the professional gathering, themed “Everyday leadership. Leadership every day.”

“The proximity of the annual meeting makes it a convenient chance for our students and faculty to join colleagues, share experiences and learn the latest ways to help our clients,” Millar said.

Presenting professionally is another career advancement for VanDerwerker, who will begin her clinical rotation in Roanoke this spring.

“The greatest thing is that it will be an opportunity for a dialogue between me and so many knowledgeable and experienced practitioners from which I can learn more and grow professionally,” VanDerwerker said. “I have drawn so much from my classroom work, the COSD faculty and the clinical experiences of my peers.”

The research process was both a challenge and a passion to VanDerwerker. 

“There is such a stigma on ADHD and the research on it is new and growing as is our understanding of executive functioning,” she said. “I wanted to look at all of the research, relate it to therapy and understand why clients and patients behave the way they do.”

Nov 7, 2016