Danielle Nader, PhD, and Jennifer Stone, PhD, graduated in May 2024 with their PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences. Below they share their paths to the program, areas of research focus and future goals.
Danielle Nader, PhD
What made you decide to pursue your PhD in this field?
Prior to coming back to get my PhD, I worked in a clinic where my caseload focused heavily on providing AAC based services. After working for a few years as an SLP, I found myself disheartened by both the lack of evidence-based practices for AAC based intervention and my peers’ discomfort with AAC. This spurred me to pursue a PhD with the hope of better equipping SLPs to provide AAC based interventions.
What was the focus of your dissertation research?
My dissertation focused on the way SLPs who are known to beexemplary structured their speech therapy sessions with children with complex communication needs who used AAC. I found that the SLPs in my study prioritized collaboration, relationships, and dynamic interaction in order to create shared meaning with the participating children.
What do you hope your research will do to move the field forward?
I hope this line of research will positively impact the ways SLPs approach AAC based interventions by providing considerations for the way they structure their sessions and implement aided language modeling. I also hope it will remind SLPs of the power of relationships for fostering meaningful interactions.
What are your future plans/career goals?
My future career goals are to build on this line of research by furthering our understanding of how exemplary AAC SLPs interact with children who use AAC and how this information can be translated to trainings to help a variety of partners become better communication partners for children who use AAC.
Jennifer Stone, PhD
I came to speech language pathology after seeing my deaf friends struggle to integrate into public school. I specialized in early intervention, then pursued my doctoral degree 25 years later to contribute to the data surrounding emergent literacy. I was disturbed by the holes in the data that affected the community literacy coalition I was building. The literacy coalition engaged in book gifting, which is giving free books and advice to families of young children in order to promote daily read aloud practices, like Reach Out and Read and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library do.
My curiosity about book gifting inspired my dissertation research critically analyzing the content of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library books. I hope my research will encourage people to pay attention to the content of children’s books and to the historical and theoretical roots informing their own assumptions around what is ‘right’. I plan to continue exploring personal introspection and respect for children as paths toward social justice.
The Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences sends each graduate into their field knowing they will make a considerable impact on their community. If you are an alumnus of one of our programs and would like to share your achievements, please get in touch.