Five graduate students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Communicative Disorders recently won scholarships from the Wisconsin Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Association (WSHA).
The following students will be honored at the 2013 WSHA Convention in February:
Jessica Bruns – Winner of the 2013 Friends of WSHA Scholarship
Jessica is a second-year master's student in the Speech-Language Pathology program. She is from Rockford, Illinois, and Clearwater, Florida, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Communicative Disorders from UW-Madison. She is currently working with Dr. Shannon Theis in the Craniofacial Anomalies/Cleft Palate Clinic at the American Family Children's Hospital. In addition to her clinical work at UW-Madison, Jessica has worked overseas with DeafAid, a non-profit organization that provides free hearing screenings and deaf education to children and adults in the Kibera and Kware slums of Nairobi, Kenya. After graduation, Jessica would like to work both overseas and stateside, primarily with children with articulation disorders.
Cynthia Chow - Winner of the 2013 WSHA Foundation Research Grant
Cynthia is a fourth-year graduate student in the Au.D./Ph.D. program at UW-Madison. She graduated from UW-Milwaukee in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders. She is currently a pre-doctoral trainee at the Waisman Center under the mentorship of Dr. Samuel Gubbels. Her research investigates the treatment of hearing loss through regeneration of cochlear hair cells.
Chelsea Conrad – Winner of the 2013 Jack Kile Award
Chelsea is a second-year graduate student in the Doctor of Audiology program at UW-Madison. She graduated from UW-Madison in 2010 with Bachelor of Science in Communicative Disorders. Her future career goal is to work with adults and children in a hospital-based setting, as well as serve as an educator of future students of audiology.
Sara Kurtzweil – Winner of the 2013 Gladys McKinley Scholarship
Sara received her Bachelor of Science in Communicative Disorders from UW-Madison in 2011. She is currently pursuing her Master of Science in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at UW-Madison and will graduate this May 2013. Sara enjoys volunteering for elderly residents of Oakwood Village University Woods and being actively involved with the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA) and the WSHA. Her future career goal is to provide evaluation and treatment services in the areas of speech, language, cognition, and swallowing for hospital patients in acute care and inpatient rehabilitation.
Courtney E. Venker – Winner of the 2013 Larson Research Grant
Courtney is a speech-language pathologist and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communicative Disorders. Her research focuses on language acquisition in children with language delay and autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, she is interested in mechanisms of language learning, the relationship between language and autism severity, and the impact of adult language input on language development. Her dissertation title is "Statistical Word Learning and Non-Social Visual Attention in Children with Autism."