ASHA Convention 2023

Author: Faith Rossi | Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders | Semester: Spring 2023

My name is Faith Rossi and I began my research during the spring semester of 2023 after brainstorming research topics the previous semester. I plan to graduate with a degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders with minors in marketing and Spanish for the professions through the College of Education and Health professions in the spring of 2024. I have had the pleasure of learning from my mentor Dr. Rachel Glade, and we plan to publish the findings in the summer of 2024.

I took the class Intro to Research in Communication Disorders during my sophomore year which was taught by Dr. Glade. During this course, I found interest in the deaf and hard of hearing community and wanted to pursue research regarding this population. Through internships with speech pathologists in high school and previous knowledge about the field, I had not been exposed to children with hearing loss. This group of patients need specialized care which I found interesting and felt that choosing this topic for my undergraduate research would provide me a thorough background of the challenges they face. Dr. Glade has a passion for, and is knowledgeable about, the deaf and hard of hearing community so I believed she would make a great mentor. After brainstorming various possibilities for my undergraduate research, Dr. Glade and I decided a scoping review regarding the sociodemographic variables in listening and spoken language outcomes for children who use hearing technology would be the best option. This study had been previously started by Dr. Glade, Dr. Ellen Rhoades, Dr. Nannette Nicholson, and Dr. Melinda Johnson, so I had the opportunity to join the team and work closely with these individuals as well.

The first challenge I faced was not having confidence in my work. There were multiple occasions that I did not trust my judgement and was afraid I was reporting inaccurate information. Writing has also never been a strong suit of mine so writing scholarly articles was terrifying to me. These are examples of instances I am incredibly grateful for my mentor leading me through the process of research and how to report scholarly information.

I had the opportunity to attend the ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) convention in November, 2023 to present the research I had gathered thus far. This was such an amazing experience that pushed me far out of my comfort zone. I was the only undergraduate student to attend the convention from the University of Arkansas so needless to say it was nerve racking to approach an unknown situation alone. I am not a naturally outgoing person so the idea of presenting the work I had poured hours into and not knowing how people would react created a lot of internal stress as I approached the situation. However, after I began my presentation, the stress dissipated and I loved explaining the research I grew to love and spread my findings with other speech language pathologists and audiologists.

My presentation at the ASHA convention reported the sociodemographic variables of roughly half of the articles deemed relevant to the study. The next step is to analyze the remaining articles so that a final paper can be written and published by this summer. I would also love to continue this study as a systematic review during graduate school. I am beyond grateful for the opportunities the honors college research grant has given me as it allowed me to discover my love for research!