Online Master's Program Feeding Need for School Speech Pathologists
Since earning her bachelor’s degree from James Madison University in
1997, Jennifer Cythers Lee has enjoyed a successful career as an
educator at Occoquan Elementary School in Woodbridge, where she
currently serves as the school’s Title 1 math resource teacher. In the
fall, the 37-year-old will take on another challenge in the classroom:
identifying and assisting children with speech and language disorders.
Lee is one of 13 students who recently completed a Virginia
collaborative distance-learning master’s degree program in
speech-language pathology. The program, known as DLVE-SLP, is a
partnership between JMU, Hampton University and Longwood University.
Designed to address the ongoing shortage of certified speech-language
pathologists within Virginia public schools, it is supported by a grant
from the state Department of Education.
“I always knew I wanted to get my master’s,” Lee says. “I wanted to
stay in the schools but also assume more of a leadership position.” She
was drawn to speech-language pathology for the opportunity to work with
special-needs students in small groups. “It allows me to see the
connections between things.”
The DLVE-SLP program developed under the direction of Dr. Carol
Dudding, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders and
interim director of speech-language pathology at JMU. Students must
complete prerequisite courses and be admitted to one of the three
partnering universities. In-state students are given first priority, and
there is tuition assistance available in exchange for a student’s
commitment to work in Virginia public schools after graduation.
The part-time program caters to working professionals, many of whom
have family obligations. Students generally take two courses per
semester and graduate in three years. The first cohort of students began
in June 2007 and graduated in 2010. The second started in the summer of
2009 and graduated in May. A third group enrolled last year and will
finish in 2014. All students attend a two-day orientation at the start
of the program and an annual one-day program meeting. Cohorts generally
number between 20 and 25 students with an average age of 34.
“Traditional programs don’t fit with somebody who’s working and
can’t be flexible,” says Kim Palko, 45, a social worker who discovered
the DLVE-SLP program after relocating to Northern Virginia from San
Francisco. “There are a lot of universities in the D.C. area for speech
pathology, but they didn’t have the program that I needed. Either it was
cost-prohibitive or they required you to commit full-time. This worked
around my schedule. It was a dream fulfillment.”
Because JMU is the fiscal agent for the state grant, every student
who enrolls in the program is assigned a JMU email account and given
access to the university’s Blackboard system and library services.
Classes are taught online, either in real time via Illuminate or by
allowing students to log on to Blackboard on their own time and listen
to prerecorded lectures, view multimedia presentations and other
materials, and download and complete assignments. “We have some students
who get on at midnight, some who get on in the morning, some who are on
all weekend,” Dudding says. In addition, courses have regular online
discussion forums, and some faculty members hold virtual office hours.
Lee says the flexible schedule allowed her to complete her studies
while continuing to work and tend to her three children, ages 6, 9 and
12. “It wasn’t always easy. I had to miss some baseball games and
swimming practices. But my husband was very supportive and the kids
adjusted pretty well. Overall it was doable, and the best thing was I
didn’t have to commute.”
The curriculum employs teachers from each of the three schools plus
the University of Virginia, a charter member of the program. “I really
feel that we had an advantage in working with professors from all over
the state,” Lee says. “All of our professors were well respected in the
field of speech-language pathology, and this was very beneficial to our
experiences.”
In addition to their coursework, students in the program are
required to complete 400 clinical hours, beginning with a summer session
in Harrisonburg during their second year. Once they return to their
home university, they are assigned to work under the supervision of a
local certified speech-language pathologist.
Speech-language pathologists deal with disorders ranging from
auditory processing and cognitive communication to articulation and
swallowing. “Certainly the caseload in public schools isn’t going down,”
says program coordinator Teresa Druling, in part because “we’re
identifying these children earlier than we did 20 or 30 years ago.”
Also, more medically fragile children are being integrated into regular
classrooms with the help of technology, she says. As a result, demand
for speech-language pathologists in schools is high, and job openings
are often advertised well into the academic year. Rural areas of the
state are especially underserved.
JMU graduates of the DLVE-SLP program have a 100 percent pass rate
on the Praxis test, the national exam for teacher certification, and
their scores have been comparable to on-campus students, Dudding says.
“We can say we’re doing a good job, but when students have those types
of scores, that shows we’re doing a good job.” Also, the program’s
attrition rate is low compared to other online education programs, a
fact she says should help ensure its future.
Related links:
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By James Heffernan (’96), JMU Public Affairs
June 6, 2012
