Suzanne Banda, a speech-language pathology graduate student at Illinois State University, recently received a $5,000 American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation Graduate Student Scholarship.
Banda received the scholarship during the recent 2014 Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), held November 20–22 in Orlando, Florida.
The Graduate Student Scholarship program supports master’s and doctoral students in the field of speech-language pathology or audiology who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement.
Banda is a first-year speech-language pathology graduate student. She is originally from Los Angeles, where she attended undergraduate school at Loyola Marymount University. Upon graduating, she was accepted into the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program and moved to a small town in Japan to teach English at an elementary school. It was there that she discovered her love for communication science and began to work toward her master’s degree.
Banda plans to work as a bilingual speech-language pathologist in the medical setting. As a native Spanish-speaker, she is particularly interested in helping individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as they recover their communication abilities. The ASHFoundation Graduate Student scholarship has greatly assisted her in coming closer to obtaining her goal.
About the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation
ASHFoundation’s mission is to advance knowledge about the causes and treatment of hearing, speech, and language problems. The ASHFoundation raises funds from individuals, corporations, and organizations to support research, graduate education, and special projects that foster discovery and innovation in the field of communication sciences.
About the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
The national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 173,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialize in preventing and assessing hearing and balance disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment, including hearing aids. Speech-language pathologists identify, assess, and treat speech and language problems, including swallowing disorders.
