Mississippi University for Women’s National Student Speech Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA) chapter is golden.
The W’s NSSLHA chapter recently received gold honors for 2020 from the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association. The award recognizes the chapter’s work in raising awareness of communication sciences and disorders (CSD) on more than 110 local college campuses and communities across the country, increasing advocacy efforts by sending more than 15,500 letters to state and federal legislators, providing scholarships to students in CSD programs by contributing more than $15,000 to the ASH Foundation’s NSSLHA Scholarship and supporting CSD-related organizations with more than $162,000 in donations.
“This is a wonderful achievement that helps elevate the visibility of our speech language pathology program,” said Tammie McCoy, dean of The W’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “Each year local chapters across the country engage in fundraising, advocacy activities and social media activities to get the word out about the profession of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology. Having an active NSSLHA chapter leads to leadership opportunities for students and creates experiences students will carry into their professional lives after graduation.”
The W’s NSSLHA chapter has a long history of engagement at the local level. Kathy L. Shapley accepted the department chair position in 2018 at The W. When she saw all of the amazing work the chapter was accomplishing, she told everyone at The W about the honors program at the national level. With a little bit of effort, the chapter completed all of the requirements to meet silver honors from the National NSSLHA organization in 2019.
This year, the student officers of the chapter set their sights on gold honors. There are many active local NSSLHA chapters across the country, but it takes good mentors committed to building future leaders to help local chapters achieve national honors. Shapley said The W is fortunate to have co-advisors who do just that. Under the direction of co-advisors Janette Hreish and Stephanie Kelley, the students set out a plan brought home the gold.
Membership in the chapter is open to speech-language pathology majors at The W.
NSSLHA is the only national student organization for pre-professionals studying CSDs recognized by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Established in 1972, NSSLHA is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, and supports more than 12,040 members and more than 300 chapters at colleges and universities nationwide.
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