FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Communication Disorders Students SURFing for Knowledge
Fran Hagstrom, from left, assistant professor of communication disorders, and students Kathleen Millerd, Sara Kutac and Sara Albrecht attended the national conference of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in November in Miami.
Sara Albrecht and Sara Kutac, both seniors and members of the Honors College at the University of Arkansas, received funding through the State Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. Albrecht is also a presidential scholar in the college.
Fran Hagstrom, an assistant professor of communication disorders, mentors Albrecht and also received funds for research projects through the SURF program. Hagstrom strives to involve undergraduate students in research through her work with the Honors College. She and one of her students won SURF awards last year, too. Barbara Shadden, professor and coordinator of the communication disorders program, mentors Kutac.
The SURF program assists undergraduate students to conduct in-depth research projects in their specific fields of study with the assistance of faculty mentors. To be eligible to apply for these funds, students must have a minimum grade-point average of 3.25, 30 or more hours of credit toward a degree at the time of funding, and the support of a faculty mentor. Awards range from $1,200 to $2,900 for the student and $1,000 for the mentor.
Hagstrom, Albrecht, Kutac and Kathleen Millerd, another communication disorders student in the Honors College, traveled to Miami in November to attend the national conference of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The students presented a poster on the theme “Undergraduate Research: The early and profound changing of minds.”
The students answered questions to illustrate their experiences with undergraduate research. Their poster was displayed for an entire day, and Hagstrom said many people who viewed it assumed the work was from master’s theses of graduate students, not undergraduates.
“They were bowled over,” Hagstrom said. “The students represented the University of Arkansas and the Honors College well.”
Research as Career Development
Hagstrom is passionate about getting students involved in research projects early in their academic careers. One method of pedagogy, she explained, plugs the student into a mentor faculty member’s research, but she prefers to give the student more autonomy.
“My goal is to get the student to recognize that he or she can ask an interesting question and do something with it,” Hagstrom said. “Then they own it. It’s their research. I like them to get that feeling, that attachment, early.”
She believes getting students involved in research early may help fill a growing shortage of academic faculty in health professions such as speech-language pathology and nursing. Those who conduct research as an undergraduate may be more likely to pursue an advanced degree to continue a research agenda, rather than choosing clinical work, Hagstrom said.
“We are trying to change the mindset in important ways,” she said. “There’s a national campaign to lure students toward advanced academic degrees because there are not enough Ph.D.s to replace retiring university faculty members across the country.
“Promoting this interest in research can help us prepare for the future.”
Eight juniors studying communication disorders are developing research questions in the next Honors College cohort, Hagstrom said.
Development of Language
Albrecht is studying language development in twins between the ages of 7 and 14 months. She’ll take a video camera into homes to observe the babies, both identical and fraternal twins, as they play with their mothers and begin to talk.
Child-language scholars believe that language evolves from the nonverbal communication system used in primitive speech acts that are shared between children and the people in their lives, Albrecht explained in her SURF application.
“I am specifically interested in the way twins use (primitive speech acts) as compared to developmental expectations, if the use differs between monozygotic and dizygotic twins and if they differ when interacting with the sibling or with the caregivers,” Albrecht wrote.
Kutac also is studying the acquisition of language and will conduct surveys of a parent and another caregiver about their perception of a child’s language development when the mother suffers from depression. She wants to find out whether the mother’s depression affects the child’s language development.
In addition to the survey, Kutac will use a vocabulary scale to assess the child’s progression.
Hagstrom’s students start planning their research projects in their junior year so that they can start collecting data in the fall of their senior year. The SURF funding helps pay expenses of the projects, such as buying videotaping equipment, and can allow a student to quit a part-time job to devote more time to the research.
Poster Presentation
The students used their Honors College undergraduate theses projects as vignettes to highlight, personalize and demystify undergraduate research at the Florida conference. According to the students’ summary of their poster, students who participate in undergraduate research have the opportunity to develop analytical and organizational skills that are critical to the profession of speech-language pathology.
Albrecht was interested in the twin question because she is a twin and she believed that developing a research question of her own choosing would ensure that she followed through with the project.
The students described their faculty mentors as a vital part of the research process. The mentor helped clarify their research questions, provided guidance on designing the project and offered friendship. The students also related the importance of paying attention to detail when applying for funds.
Millerd, a senior, presented her thesis project, “Social Workers’ Perceptions about Language Acquisition in Sexually Abused Children,” at an interdisciplinary child welfare partnership meeting Dec. 7 on the UA campus. She is investigating whether the state’s social workers recognize when sexual abuse may affect a child’s language development.
The two other students whose research was highlighted in the poster session were Megan Bergquist, a 2005 Honors graduate in her second year of the communication disorders master’s program, and Katherine Post, a 2006 Honors graduate in her first year of the master’s program. Bergquist’s thesis was titled “English-First and Spanish-First Speaking Parent Perceptions of School Language,” and Post’s was titled “The Prevalence of Foreign Language Learning Disability in a General College Cohort.”
“To see my own words come together to stress the importance of the recognition among social workers of language acquisition among sexually abused children is something that is priceless and worth all of the hard work I have put into my research writing,” Millerd explained.
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Contact:
Heidi Stambuck, director of communications
College of Education and Health Professions
(479) 575-3138, stambuck@uark.edu