Crimson Wife

I don't know how close you are to Toronto, but if you can make it to the Sound Intuition conference on 4/22, I would highly encourage it. I've heard Tina Childress speak and she's an awesome presenter.

If you're talking about the ASHA bio and chem/physics requirements, don't worry about them. You don't need to take courses intended for STEM/pre-med majors. You don't even have to take them at a 4 year school- community college courses are fine. Lots of my classmates in the Utah State 2nd bachelor's are taking a "conceptual chemistry" course that is supposed to be pretty easy. If you're talking about A&P of Speech & Hearing (that may be a combo course or two separate ones) and Speech & Hearing Science (again that might be 1 or 2 courses), then those aren't easy. But I found the 2 A&P courses at USU to be more tedious than truly difficult. Lots and lots of memorizing the names of bones, cartilages, muscles, etc. and being able to label them on a diagram. Acoustics is part of the USU A&P of Hearing course and was probably the hardest unit of that since I never took physics in high school or college. Speech Science I haven't taken yet but I've heard it is one of the most difficult in the 2nd bachelor's degree. ETA: I don't have to take neuro since my first degree was in psychology and I took a bunch of neuroscience classes as part of that.

2nd bachelor's programs are also financial-aid eligible if the individual isn't self-financing the degree out of savings and/or their job.

I realized that I didn't answer the question about why I didn't just apply to Extended Master's programs right out of the gate. The reason is that I'm a mid-life career changer (first degree was earned in the 20th century, LOL!) and didn't have any recent academic recommendations. I also was feeling depressed last spring about the discovery of my daughter's hearing loss and I could get started with the Utah State 2nd bachelor's and the community college SLPA courses with a LOT less lead time. I was able to enroll as a non-degree student at USU in April '15 to start in May. It took maybe a month for all the paperwork to convert from non-degree to 2nd bachelor's status. Starting school right away helped get me out of my funk because I was doing something proactive rather than just sitting around feeling sorry for myself.

You probably CANNOT work as a SLPA unless you have a bachelor's in CSD (1st or 2nd). Technically my state allows those who complete an Associate's in SLPA from one of the community colleges that offer the major to get a SLPA license. But from what I've heard, there are so many SLPA's who have the bachelor's in CSD that it is nearly impossible for the AA-only SLPA's to find a job. Most of them wind up working as special ed para's or Applied Behavioral Analysis interventionists while finishing up the bachelor's. I'm doing the SLPA program concurrently with my 2nd bachelor's so that I'll have the option of working as a SLPA during grad school or while re-applying. Some schools will even hire grad students as a SLP on waiver, and I've heard that they prefer licensed SLPA's for this. But I'm not sure yet whether this is the route I want to go. So much is still so TBD- where I can get placed for my SLPA fieldwork, where I might get accepted to grad school, what scholarships I might receive to help offset attending an in-person master's, etc.

If you want to work with the deaf & hard-of-hearing, there are two pretty different approaches. The first is going into auditory-verbal therapy and getting your certification as a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist (LSLS). Sign language is seen as optional and best learned after the child has a strong foundation in spoken English. You can find out more information about that here: http://www.agbell.org/AcademyDocument.aspx?id=541 The second would be "Total Communication" (TC), where the emphasis is on the client using both sign language and speech, with signing being considered the "native language". Gallaudet's and Fresno State's SLP programs have a TC emphasis. I know that you have already been accepted to a SLP program in Canada, but you might want to take a look at their coursework requirements if this is an approach that interests you. I'm in favor of parents having options and deciding for themselves which approach is right for their child.

I'm interested in auditory-verbal therapy for the deaf & hard-of-hearing and that is something that can be done with either an Aud.D., M.S.-SLP, or M.Ed. I joined ASHA SIG 9 (Hearing Disorders in Children) and asked on their forum. I got a ton of great responses from professionals working in a variety of fields. Audiology is a 4 year program (occasionally 3) vs. 2 years for SLP or Deaf Ed. I'll be in my 40's before I start grad school so the sooner I can start earning an income and the less debt I have when I graduate the better. There are scholarships available for SLP and Deaf Ed students interested in auditory-verbal therapy but if there are similar ones for AudD. students, I haven't come across them. Purchasing the sound-treated booth and the equipment required for audiology testing to have my own practice can easily run $60k. There are start-up costs for a SLP practice as well (all those assessments aren't cheap), but not remotely in the same ballpark. SLP's often have the easiest time billing insurance companies for AVT. SLP is the most flexible degree if I decide that I want to shift gears and work with a different client population. If I get burned out doing AVT at some point, I could easily retrain by just doing a few CEU's. I took the observation class early in my 2nd bachelor's sequence and spent a lot of time observing both audiologists and SLP's who work with the deaf. I found that a *LOT* of what audiologists do on a daily basis is pretty dull.

Check your state licensing requirements because you may need to complete a formal SLPA, OTA, or PTA program in order to work as one.

That's a lot of money to spend on a degree that you don't intend to use. If I cannot get accepted to SLP after 2 tries, my plan is to get a Master's in Deaf Education and become an Auditory-Verbal Educator rather than an Auditory-Verbal Therapist. The work is similar but with small groups in a classroom setting rather than 1:1 in a therapy setting. I think I'm better suited for SLP than classroom teaching but either way I'd be achieving my goal of helping deaf & hard-of-hearing kids learn spoken English. That's what I feel God is calling me to do with my life and whatever route is necessary to achieve my goal is fine.

Which school does not accept USU's COMD 2500???? I took an online Intro to CSD through the SLPA program at a community college. I don't know if it will count for your target school but it was dirt-cheap for me as a state resident. They don't have their fall schedule up yet but this is the spring semester course description: https://classes.deltacollege.edu/schedule/sections.cfm?term=30&year=201516&region=INET&dept=COMM%20DIS&course=COMM%20DIS002

Honey, you're not "behind" if you're still in your early 20's. I'll be in my 40's before I start grad school. My mother-in-law didn't go back to school until she was in her 50's.

Take the Fullbright as I'm sure you will get in again to grad school if you re-apply. If they liked you without the Fullbright on your application, there's no reason to think that they wouldn't like you with it. This seems like a no-brainer to me.

Cal State Fresno is another very pro-ASL program. Nazareth has a DHH track that is officially modality neutral (they offer classes in Cued Speech, for example) but that works closely with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT and NTID is pro-ASL. I want to say that San Diego State has an ASL emphasis as well but I'm not 100% sure so you'd have to check on that. The programs that have an auditory-verbal emphasis to their dhh track include Vanderbilt, Akron, Utah State, UNC-Chapel Hill, UT-Dallas, South Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Arkansas Medical Sciences, and Illinois State. San Jose State has a grant-funded program that is currently in its last year and may or may not be renewed. The director of the program told me SJSU will continue to work with the local oral school for placing externs there but the scholarship support may not continue.

USU won't accept more than 1 transfer course so you'd probably wind up having to retake most of the pre-reqs in order to earn the 2nd bachelor's. Not sure how grad schools would look at that. Were you the poster who was really interested in Gallaudet? USU offers a 2 course certificate in deafblindness. I'm taking the first course this semester (it's a CSD elective) and so far it has been very interesting. The intro course will be offered again this summer and the follow-on course in the fall (I'm planning on taking that to finish out the certificate). http://distance.usu.edu/deafblindness-cert/ The cost would be $2.4k if you are not a UT resident.

I've sat with a behavior interventionist through a multi-hour tantrum on the part of my daughter on more than one occasion. Screaming, physical aggression, throwing things, etc. Fortunately she no longer has that kind of tantrum (ABA really does work!) but I barely had the patience to put up with it as her mom. I can't imagine trying to sit calmly through it with someone else's kid the way the BI's did. At least with SLP, the sessions are 30-60 minutes so if the kid is having an absolute meltdown, the time with him/her is relatively short (ABA sessions can be up to 5 hours long). Also, with ABA the tasks are often designed to provoke the child in order to work on flexibility and tolerating "non-preferred" activities. SLP tends to be much more child-led in terms of using "preferred" activities to work on the speech & language goals. God bless the BI's because the work they do is invaluable. But it is definitely something that takes the right temperament for.

I'm doing some specialized training this summer in auditory-verbal therapy (primarily to help my daughter with her post-cochlear implant auditory rehab) that I hope will have the added bonus of helping me get a good SLPA training field placement next year and job contacts (either as a SLPA or a CF). There aren't enough SLP's trained in AVT to meet the demand for them so I'm hoping that the clinics/schools might be more open to hiring a SLPA with AVT training.

To get promoted to a decent-paying supervisory position in ABA requires a master's degree in a related field (SLP used to be one but they tightened the requirements so now unless the school has a specific autism track, it doesn't qualify), passing a certification exam, and a certain number of hours' experience working in ABA. I would strongly recommend you shadow some behavior interventionists because ABA is *NOT* an easy field. My daughter has autism and has been receiving ABA for several years. I know I'm personally much better suited towards working with multiple clients for shorter sessions each day like a SLP does rather than a single child for long sessions like a BI does. I wouldn't mind working as a case manager since that would be doing shorter sessions with more kids but there's no way to get hired as one without first working as a BI. I'm doing a SLP Assistant certificate concurrently with my COMD 2nd bachelor's. Plan B would be to work as a SLPA (hopefully with deaf & hard-of-hearing kids) and re-apply. Plan C would be doing a master's in deaf education and becoming an auditory-verbal educator rather than an auditory-verbal therapist.

If it's an established university (say, the University of Delaware), then I don't think there is much risk that they won't receive accreditation. The department admin is going to work with ASHA to make sure that they do what is necessary to move from candidate to fully accredited status.

Some programs state that they only look at the last 60 credits, and grad school should count towards that (double-check with your target schools to be sure if they have a last 60 policy).

There is big demand for SLP's who focus on accent reduction, especially if you are able to help those whose 1st language is an Asian one (since those are more different from English than European ones like Spanish are). http://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/speech-pathologists-and-accent-reduction

The USU COMD 3700 is an easy course. I would say that as long as the chem course you're taking isn't too hard, you'd be fine doing both. Now I wouldn't recommend it with the chem course I took back during my 1st bachelor's but that was designed to be a "weed-out" for pre-meds (what I was at the time), engineers, and science majors.

If you start taking classes summer semester (begins May 9th), you can do the program less-than-FT and still finish by April '17. What you would do would be to start in non-degree status and then as soon as your application gets processed (relatively quickly in my experience), you'd get converted to 2nd bachelor's status. With your listed cumulative GPA, I would recommend taking no more than 3 courses per semester to maximize your chances of getting a 4.0. It's priced per credit rather than per semester so there's no cost difference in taking 4 semesters vs. 3.

So long as the school is accredited by ASHA, you will find a CF position SOMEWHERE. But where rankings come into play somewhat is where that is. CF's can be competitive, especially if you want a higher-paying one in a major metro area. I'd like to maybe work for a cochlear implant center and I think a higher-ranked school like Vanderbilt or UNC-Chapel Hill would open more doors than lower tier schools that also have a deaf & hard-of-hearing specialty track like University of Southern Mississippi. Do you know specifically what type of job you're looking for after you get your master's?

I am doing the SLP Asst coursework concurrently with my 2nd bachelor's with the idea of working as a SLPA if I don't get accepted to grad school the first time around. Academic Language Therapy is something that pays decently (the going rate for certified ones in my neck of the woods is $100/hour but of course that includes overhead). That would require completion of a reading intervention training program and most of those are held in the summer. http://imslec.org/directory.asp?action=accredited

Different post-baccs have different numbers of courses. Utah State's is 12 courses so 3 semesters if you go FT and 6 semesters if you go half-time. They offer every course every semester including summers. The cost is $299/credit for out-of-state, which is one of the more reasonable tuitions I've seen. Eastern NM is I believe cheaper but they do not offer every course every semester.