Author: Rylee Atkins Major: Communication Disorders

Within the 2020 fall grant term, I worked with Dr. Lisa Bowers, my honors mentor, to further my research study on Language Abilities of Children who Qualify for Both Speech and Language Therapy and Play Therapy with both of our interests being centered around support and collaboration benefiting the “whole child.” This past term has been an exceptional term for my research because of the opportunity to work with other professionals including, Dr. Perryman from the graduate counselor education program and Dr. Robinson from the statistics department. Both whom have helped Dr. Bowers and myself further our knowledge and interests on the subject.

I am pleased to say that we have now completely finished a comprehensive literature review and analysis on the subject during this term and found very little information regarding the similarities between children with both behavioral and language difficulties in the context we are studying. This has also been of great help from Dr. Bowers’ connections and communication with the university librarian.

After finishing up the literature review we had another breakthrough this term in being able to look over and take a part a speech language pathologist’s interview and opinion on interprofessional collaboration that she has personally experienced in the elementary school setting. This encouraged both of us to dig deeper seeing the great need there is for an emphasis in our field for interprofessional collaboration.

Recently, Dr. Robinson of the statics department within the university has teamed up with us to help analyze and organize the data previously collected. Dr. Bowers and myself do not have the knowledge that Dr. Robinson has when it comes to working with numbers and subjects, therefore, her insight into working with us has been greatly appreciated. She has helped merge our data from 2016 and 2017 and used multivariate imputation by chained equations using a random forest-based algorithm to help us create statistical trees using subsets found in the data that better help us understand what commonalities are found between the children specified. This has also helped by proving a visual for my final defense.

In November of 2020 I was able to propose my research findings thus far to Dr. Lisa Bowers and Dr. Perryman. It was and still is an honor to be critiqued and held accountable by incredible woman professionals who I look up to.

Thanks to this grant and the wonderful mentors and professionals that have helped me thus far I have created a project that I am proud to showcase and knowledge I cannot wait to build upon in my future practice. I learned much about the direct effects on mental health for individuals with differing langauge abilities and their families. I also have been able to see the need for interprofessional collaboration between not only my field of speech language pathology, but also that of educators, certified play therapists, and other therapy services provided by the school system. I have been able to expereince stress and failure and grow from the experiences in research to produce professional work. I am determined to finish strong in my last semester of researching and conclude with a thesis that is defended and publishable. I will continue to work with Dr. Bowers and other professionals to complete this goal.