More than 100 students applied for the Minority Student Leadership Program in Philadelphia, and among the 32 accepted were two graduate students from Cal State Long Beach.
Ana Maria Garay, 27, is a graduate assistant in the department of communicative disorders and Candice Greenwood, 24, is the secretary for CSULB’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic.
“If almost a hundred people across the United States and Canada applied and out of the 32 selected, two people from our program were chosen, that says a lot about our program,” Garay said.
Each year, the American Speech Language Hearing Association holds an annual conference for students interested in careers in audiology, speech language pathology and hearing sciences. The students can participate in a program to build leadership skills and interact with professionals from their areas of study.
The program is based on recruiting racial and ethnic minorities who are historically underrepresented in the professions.
During the program, students participated in leadership focus activities. They met and interacted with the association’s leaders in order to develop a list of prospective mentors. The program’s focus was to prepare students to take on a leader role before working in the professional field.
“Interacting with leaders in the field of speech language pathology afforded me the opportunity to obtain first-hand knowledge regarding the nature of unforeseen challenges,” Greenwood said in a press release.
Garay said not many people know about career opportunities in communicative disorders and many of those who are pursuing careers in the field do not know about the Minority Student Leadership Program.
“There’s really little knowledge about our program,” Garay said. “There needs to be more information given to younger students about [speech language pathology].”
Garay and Greenwood study speech language pathology, which focuses on assessing, diagnosing, treating and preventing disorders related to speech, language, cognitive-communication, voice, swallowing and fluency.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor statistics, careers in the area of speech and language are expected to grow by 19 percent from 2008 to 2018 — faster than the average for all occupations.
“I already have a job offer from my internship,” Garay said. “There’s a huge demand if you are bilingual.”
The Minority Student Leadership Program is an annual conference. Applications are available each year.
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