Honors Undergraduate Student Marlena Davis
Author: Marlena Davis | Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders | Semester: Fall 2024
My name is Marlena Davis, and I am a senior in the Honors College of Education and Health Professions. My major is Communication Sciences and Disorders and I hope to one day become a Speech Language Pathologist in a hospital. I have always been fascinated with communication and am also passionate about helping people. Moreover, I am very interested in the brain and how different disorders, more specifically language disorders, can affect someone. This is what led me into my research project on creating a support group for aphasia. Aphasia is a language disorder, the main cause being a stroke, that affects a person’s ability to speak or comprehend language. This affects people vocationally, socially and mentally, so a support group allows for people to connect with one another and find community.
When I first joined the honors college junior year, I knew that I had an interest in aphasia, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to research. When I consulted my mentor Dr. Rachel Glade, she had the great idea to create a support group at the University of Arkansas Speech and Hearing Clinic. After we chose my topic, I began my literature review and observations. In order to gain background knowledge on aphasia, I researched how to create a successful support group, how to communicate with people with aphasia, and the role a Speech-Language Pathologist plays in a support group. Through this process, I learned how to access helpful research and I realized how difficult it was as well. It was hard to find resources on aphasia support groups which made me confident in the need for a support group in Northwest Arkansas.
My next goal was to observe various support groups to gain insight on how they run. The first support group I attended was biweekly at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. This support group was run by Rebecca Torres, CCC-SLP as well as a few University of Arkansas graduate students. This was an aphasia support group that had an average of five people attending every session. This was a great first experience because it was very structured and was a smaller group. Every session had a theme, for example, vacations or amusement parks. The group would start out with an icebreaker as well as talking with the whole group, and then it would split up into one on one communication practice. This is something that I really enjoyed and definitely want to incorporate into my own support group. The next aphasia support group I attended was at Lee’s Summit Medical Center in Missouri. This support group was a lot larger and had around 25 attendees. There were 2 SLP’s running it, 2 graduate students and 3 undergraduate students. This was an amazing experience because I actually got to work face to face with the aphasia patients and help guide the support group. One of the weeks, me and the 2 other undergraduate students were able to lead the support group and create the curriculum for it. This was an amazing experience and helped me learn so much about creating a successful support group.
Now that I have done all of my research and observations, I am currently working on creating the support group. My plan for this is to create a 16-week curriculum for the fall season and it will be meant for people 40 years or older in Northwest Arkansas. For each week, I will include a PowerPoint that the session would follow, conversation questions for the group, and any other materials I may need.
As for what’s happening next, in February of 2025, I will be going to Conway, Arkansas to present my research project at the ArkSHA conference. This is the Arkansas Speech-Language-Hearing Association and this will be the first in person conference they have had since COVID-19. I am excited and grateful to have this experience and I know that I will learn so much. Overall, being a part of the honors program and being able to create a meaningful research project has been so rewarding and beneficial. I will be able to use the knowledge I have gained in my personal and professional future.