Communication, says Anne Davidson, is part of what makes us human. We listen, speak and relate.
Loss or diminishment of these skills can prove devastating.
Davidson is director of NIU’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, which annually provides critical services to 5,000 different people from babies to great-grandparents. More than 250 graduate and undergraduate students receive clinical education or perform in-service activities there.
Nine hundred newborns at Kishwaukee Community Hospital have their hearing tested each year. Children at St. Mary’s School in Sycamore receive speech and language services, as do senior citizens of Oak Crest Retirement Center. Bilingual services are provided in speech-language pathology.
These numbers all will grow with the clinic’s move this spring into the larger and state-of-the-art space at the new NIU Family Health, Wellness and Literacy Center, where faculty can engage in research that can have immediate, direct and positive application.
Opened in 1938, and operated by the College of Health and Human Sciences and its School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders, the year-round clinic provides everything from hearing testing to services related to hearing aids to social skills groups for children with autistic spectrum disorder.
Outreach speech-language and hearing screenings reach thousands living in DeKalb, Boone, DuPage, Kane, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties, including assessments and treatments for swallowing, feeding and speech-language at, and consultation and in-service education to, various hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
“We provide our neighbors with state-of-the-art, best-practice, evidence-based services,” Davidson says. “We gain a very rich educational experience for our students.”