St. Mary's College
Speech-Language Pathology Program and ClinicSt. Mary's College
Speech-Language Pathology Program and Clinic
Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) has been among the fastest growing professions in healthcare over the last decade. Like many areas in 2010-2013, northern Indiana was vastly underserved in the specialty, with unfilled SLP positions in school systems, nursing homes and healthcare agencies throughout the region. An aging baby boomer population pointed to increased future shortages of trained specialists, yet no universities in northern Indiana at the time offered graduate level SLP programs.
St. Mary’s College approached the Foundation with a plan to partner to address this growing need for speech-language pathology services in the community by adding a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology to their undergraduate curriculum, along with a plan to enlarge its Communicative Disorders Clinic to meet graduate program requirements. This dual initiative would expand the level of clinical services provided to the community through the new Judd Leighton Speech and Language Clinic, dedicated in April of 2014, while also providing significant educational and economic benefits through the new graduate program, which began in the Fall of 2015.
