SHARE-CSD Welcomes Third Cohort

This summer, the third cohort of 12 students from around the country participated in the Summer Health Academic Research Experience in Communicative Sciences and Disorders (SHARE-CSD). Through this six-week, paid summer research and professional development experience, students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the health fields gain the skills needed to not only conduct research but also to apply to and succeed in graduate school.

SHARE-CSD is run by co-directors Susannah Levi, professor of CSD and director of undergraduate studies, and Sudha Arunachalam, professor of CSD. They are also co-PIs on the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders grant (R25DC020417) that funds the program.

“An article in The Atlantic ranked speech-language pathology #4 in a list of the ‘33 whitest jobs in America’,” say Levi and Arunachalam. “This impacts the field in many ways, including the ability to provide culturally responsive clinical services to our culturally and linguistically diverse population, as well as the knowledge base created in research.”

To increase diversity in the field, SHARE-CSD encourages applications from a broad range of students, including those from different racial/ethnic minority groups, lower-income backgrounds, and rural communities. Majoring in CSD isn’t a requirement because many students have even heard of the career path when they are applying to colleges.

“As [current and former] undergraduate program directors, we have often met students in their junior or senior year who are taking their first CSD course and who express regret that they hadn’t found the field earlier,” says Levi. “We are delighted to introduce the field to students who aren’t familiar with it, and we’ve had students majoring in psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology.”

“We’re interested in bringing in students whom we think will really benefit from what the program offers,” says Arunachalam. “This especially includes students who may not have access at their home institutions and who cannot volunteer their time for research over the summer because they need to have a job to help pay for college.”

Over the years, the 35 total SHARE-CSD participants have worked with the PIs and graduate students on projects such as:

examining whether cis men’s and cis women’s voices have changed over time by comparing contemporary voices to studies from the 1990s.
surveying a sample from the general population to understand their familiarity with common disorders, such as dysphagia, insomnia, vertigo, and ataxia
exploring how young children learn emotion words, such as “happy” and “sad”

The benefits of participating in SHARE-CSD are notable for students, including winning scholarships, being admitted to graduate school programs, and landing competitive research positions. More than a dozen students have presented their research at national conferences, and many have obtained research assistant positions at their home institutions and volunteer to mentor students from more recent cohorts.

“Thanks to our program evaluator, Dr. Leah Peoples, we have pre- and post-program survey responses from our students evaluating various aspects of the program,” say Levi and Arunachalam. “Students reported much greater comfort with analyzing and interpreting data from a research study, in visualizing what a research career would look like, in networking, and in knowing how to apply to graduate school.”