Hannah Spear Headshot
Author: Hannah Spear | Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders | Semester: Spring 2024
Hello! My name is Hannah Spear, and I am in the College of Education and Health Professions studying Communication Sciences and Disorders in hopes to become a speech pathologist. I also have a minor in Human Development and Family Sciences. My mentor for my honors project is Dr. Bowers, a Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders. We are conducting research from Spring 2024 to Spring 2025. This research will guide me in the future as I have hopes to attend graduate school for speech pathology post undergraduate. I hope to attend graduate school in my home state Texas and after graduating start a career in either a private clinic or school setting.
My research is all based around language sample analysis in pre-school aged children at risk for speech sound disorders. A language sample is an assessment that allows speech pathologist to collect data on children to identify if they are at risk of having a communication disability. In my research I am comparing two different kinds of assessments to evaluate which is most effective for identification of a potential disorder in patient’s speech. This research will have a positive impact within the speech pathologist profession because I will be able to teach and train other speech professionals about a more time effective and accurate assessment type for their clients.
I am already loving my research objective and collaborating with my mentor! I connected with Dr. Bowers during my sophomore year introductory class to honors research. Dr. Bowers talked to our class about the various research projects she was currently involved in and more that she was interested in for the future. I have always loved assessments and speech sound disorders since starting the communication sciences and disorders program, so I knew this was a perfect fit. In addition, I knew I wanted my research to be very hands on, so I love that with this project I am able to interact with children. Our research is mainly focused on children in HeadStart centers which is also an organization I love working with. HeadStart is a center for families who are in poverty and cannot afford to help their children. HeadStart provides free services to these families and allows the children to get help which I think is special!
I have learned more than I ever thought in just the first semester of doing this research. Mainly I have learned about all the different types of speech assessments that a speech pathologist can provide. In addition, I have learned about all the positive and negatives and why one assessment may be more useful and why. Without doing this research I would not have gained all this information, and I can take all of it to my future career. Throughout this first semester of research, I have learned that it is okay to not know everything or how to do something on my own. My mentor has been the best teacher and person to look up to during this last semester. She is always willing to teach me how to do something when I am confused, and I love getting her expert advice and learning from her. In addition, I have the opportunity to work with three other communication sciences and disorders students. We are working on this research project as a group, and it has been super useful being able to collaborate and learn new topics together.
We plan to continue attending HeadStart centers at the beginning of next semester and conducting assessments for the children at these centers. My group and I have also applied to present at the American Speech and Hearing Association conference. This conference is in Seattle, Washington in December of 2024 and we are looking forward to finding out if were accepted in July. This is ultimately how we will defend our honors thesis and present all of the new information we learned over our last two semesters of research.