This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cameron Mayer (graduate, speech pathology) and Courtland Hamel (senior, speech pathology), the two co-presidents of the Speech-Pathology Club. I learned about their experience leading this club and what students can gain from their club activities.
Could explain what speech pathology is for those who haven’t heard about it before?
Cameron: Speech pathology aims to help people who have difficulties with communication skills, and this involves improving social skills, stuttering, fluency, and so much more. We believe that everyone deserves a voice and they matter. So it would be easy to think of us as people who advocate for people who don't have, or have difficulty with, communicating in a verbal form.
Courtland: Speech pathologists, as described by Cameron, work with people who have communication disorders, and that includes people with swallowing disorders as well. In any kind of environment ranging from schools to clinics, you would find speech pathologists.
Thank you, and may I hear more about the speech pathology club? What are the goals of this club, and what role does each member perform to achieve those goals?
Courtland: I'm the undergraduate president, and Cameron's the graduate president. The main reason we decided to have two presidents this year is because we really wanted to advocate for graduate students. In the past, the club has not been grad-student inclusive. It's been seen as an undergraduate club, even though it wasn't. So as co-presidents, we both have the role of delegation, leading out in the overall club events, and picking up the positions and roles that have to be filled. Cameron’s specific role as the graduate president would be organizing events for grad students. She could talk more about it, but we've already had a couple of different graduate student-exclusive events that went very well. Officer-wise, we have a treasurer who handles our finances, and a secretary who takes meeting notes and gives us a meeting outline. We also have a religious VP who leads out in worship at different events and meetings. And lastly, we have our social VP, who writes emails and makes sure that everything is updated on social media for our events.
Cameron: As Courtland said, the club has been more exclusive towards the undergraduate students within the department in the past. Whereas I think last year we have really tried hard to change that, especially this year. Our goal is to be more inclusive towards other people that are outside of our major. One of our goals is definitely to spread more awareness about what we do in our field, and introduce to people what speech pathology is about if they are interested. And then we also try to include other professions because in the real world, we are very much an interdisciplinary profession. We work along with occupational therapists, physical therapists, teachers, hospital staff and many other professions coming from various backgrounds and such. Our job makes these collaborations a necessity. Our goal this year with our club is to expose our students to that collaboration now, so that moving forward, we've already gotten a jumpstart on what the real world is going to look like. So we really want to welcome people outside of our major to be inside our club. We also have a lot of events planned that are open to the whole student body.
That is a lot of responsibility on top of your coursework! What was the motivation behind you volunteering to serve as this year’s club president, and what has been your experience so far?
Courtland: I would say my primary motivation was to take a leadership role. I felt like it would be good for me, as it can help me become more independent, and I thought that I had something to contribute. I had many good ideas for the club, and I thought I would be able to make them happen. I also wanted to become more part of the department because I missed out on a lot of the department events my first two years here, even though it's a very inclusive department. I felt like I wasn't really making myself a part of it. Since this is my last year, I wanted to go fully and become part of something bigger, such as collaborating with other majors.
Cameron: I was a religious VP when I was an undergrad two years ago. So I already knew how the club worked. On top of that, coming back for grad school after taking a year abroad, I wanted to be involved in our department again and really incorporate a lot of the grad students within our club as well as have events for them. We've had a grad school game night when we partnered with the PT department, and that was really fun. And we're planning to have a potluck for all of the grad students, and some other things are coming up. I really wanted to make sure that our grad students still felt like they were part of the department and they weren't something separate. I also love planning events. I love having fun and I love to create spaces where people can feel comfortable, have fun, get outside their comfort zone, have a good time and make new friends.
I heard that one of the new activities the club has initiated this year is the ASL co curricular courses that are offered every Tuesday. May I hear more in detail what these courses entail?
Cameron: For the longest time, our department has been trying to get an ASL class for our speech students because it's crucial for us to know ASL when going into our profession in which we would work with a lot of people with hearing difficulties. So we always have been wanting to have ASL and someone to teach it for our students. And then last spring, someone came into the department and they offered to be a guest speaker to come in and teach ASL, which was amazing! We wanted to have her come in and start doing Tuesday short-courses for anybody on campus who wanted to come. And we've had a really great turnout. Last time, close to 50 students came out, and the classroom was filled with students. We've loved having her and these co-curricular courses are the beginning, possibly in the near future, offering an ASL course for Andrews students.
What are some more things the Club is planning for the remainder of the semester and for spring semester?
Courtland: Besides the potluck and vespers that we mentioned earlier, we are planning a couple of fundraisers. I don't really want to spoil too much since we don't have a solid date, but that’s one thing we're looking forward to. Also, we're planning on having our banquet in February with a bit of an international twist to it. We really wanted to integrate the diversity and internationality that is present within our department.
Cameron: Yes, we have a few fundraisers and a banquet coming up. We will also probably have a couple smaller events, like Pick-Me-Up events where students can get hot drinks or snacks in the middle of the week. I don't know how much to reveal but we are also planning some ice skating or roller skating nights and stuff.
What do you hope the students will learn or gain from your club activities? And why is that important to you?
Cameron: A deeper understanding as to what the soul of speech pathology is—not just what we do, but why we do it. I hope they will see our passion to take care of other people and the heart behind it. So I try to incorporate that into our events, and create an atmosphere where people can have a more holistic view as to what our speech pathology profession can look like. Ultimately, I hope we can help people think about how we can be ethical human beings to each other.
Courtland: We're not just trying to attract people to the major or just teach them about speech pathology—but like what Cameron said, we want to let them know what the soul of it is. The point of speech pathology is to give a voice to people that have trouble with their voice or can't even use their voice, and it’s to be an advocate for those people. That's what makes the club so important to me. To create that caring atmosphere, we held a service project this past weekend in which we sent letters to our students abroad. People actually came to participate, so that was super cool. We want to continue this, so we are discussing more service projects to do in the future, and I hope many students will feel free to come join us.
You can find the speech pathology club on instagram using the handle @au.nsslha.
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