Anya Cohen
News Editor
Tucked away in a corner of Wishart Hall lies one of the unique services that Wooster has to offer. The Herman Freedlander Speech and Hearing Clinic, established in 1966, was built as a resource with a dual purpose: to teach students and to help serve the community’s citizens with speech and hearing disorders.
The clinic provides free speech and hearing services to anyone who walks through the door, whether they are college students, faculty members or residents of the Wooster community. The services offered through the clinic are provided by students majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) and serves as course credit for the mandatory four semesters of field work that the department requires majors to fulfill.
The dual function of the clinic favors neither the students nor the clients but rather strives to serve both to its best ability.
“I pick clients that I feel will help the students to learn,” said Laura Gregg, the speech and hearing clinic supervisor. “Everything that we do in here is to help the students to acquire better skills, but we also work to benefit the client. The two [goals] are interwoven … The students serve the public and I serve the students.”
Students majoring in CSD feel as though the clinic is a crucial addition to their studies.
“I’m really, really glad that we get to work in the clinic,” said Michelle Hill ’14, who hopes to have a career in children’s speech-language pathology. “It will be really helpful having this experience going into graduate school.”
The lengthy list of services offered by the clinic includes screenings, evaluations, trainings and therapies all focused around speech and hearing. One of the services frequently taken advantage of is accent modification.
“There are a number of international students from the community and on this campus that will come here because they cannot be understood well by their professors or their peers,” said Gregg. “They find that it is a barrier for vocational goals, school goals and relationships.”
Speech and Hearing clinics are rare amongst undergraduate institutions like Wooster. The clinic at Baldwin Wallace University is the only other in the state. Wooster’s clinic sets itself even further apart by offering all of their services free of charge.
The clinic encourages students to take advantage of the resources. If you are interested in receiving the services provided by the clinic contact the Administrative Coordinator for the Department of Communication, Patrice Smith, at (330) 263-3541.