TCU’s Center for Listening and Spoken Language hosted summer institute

Fort Worth, TX

12/15/2009

By: Cody Simmonds, Schieffer School of Journalism

The TCU Center for Listening and Spoken Language’s first two-week summer institute for educators, speech-language pathologists and audiologists was held in 2009. The institute, supported by the Texas Education Agency, has the purpose of teaching and showing new skills that are essential for helping children with hearing loss.

Dr. Helen Morrison, TCU associate professor of communication sciences and disorders, said the Institute was developed to help “retool” professionals. “Recent changes in technology and the ability to identify hearing loss at birth have caused a dramatic shift in the way hearing professionals work,” she said.

Post-evaluation tests for participants in the first institute in 2009 showed that there was an increase in knowledge in all the content areas of the program. The 70 people who attended were able to earn up to 30 hours of continuing education hours in various listening and spoken language domains. Fifty of the participants were located at TCU, including 12 TCU graduate students who earned TCU course credit. Participants came from various hearing professions, including deaf educators, speech language pathologists and audiologists.

“All of these professions are important for the proper development of a deaf child,” Dr. Morrison said. The lectures were also broadcasted on television to five major regions around the state via TETN in the Rio Grande Valley, Tyler, El Paso, Lubbock and Austin areas.

The second week of the institute was an Auditory-Verbal practicum, which took place at the TCU Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic. The practicum was limited to 20 participants who were placed into teams of two and worked with a parent and a child in each session.

A team of coaches also watched and monitored the progress of the Institute participants and the children. The children who took part in programs that emphasized listening and spoken language were from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Nearly 30 families attended the institute for free.

The Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic, where the institute was held, is currently going through renovations. Plans for upcoming institutes include online learning modules and simplifying the second week practicum. “One way that to streamline is to match a coach to a group of participants for a longer period of time,” Dr. Morrison said.

For more information about the Summer Institute, contact Dr. Helen at h.morrison@tcu.edu