The Department maintains an active Speech-Language Clinic as a primary component of our clinical training program. Each semester, student clinicians provide members of the community with diagnostic and treatment services in speech-language pathology under the supervision of certified and licensed clinical faculty.

Our extensive client base represents ages across the lifespan and provides students in our program with strong experience in a wide variety of communication disorders, including fluency, aphasia, autism, and learning disabilities. As examples of this, Intelihealth recently ran a website feature on group and individual therapy for stuttering at UMD. Or see a recent article in the Worldview newsletter on our stuttering group.

The University’s Hearing and Speech Clinic services patients of all ages from the surrounding communities and states for their hearing needs. Three sound suites are equipped with state-of-the-art computerized tools for use in diagnostic and rehabilitative measures.

An established hearing aid dispensing program utilizing digital amplification exposes students to the most recent advances in technology.

The Language-Learning Early Advantage Program (LEAP) is an individualized preschool program with a strong language-based focus. LEAP’s mission is threefold: to prepare speech-language pathologists for work in mainstream educational settings, to conduct research in the areas related to early childhood language and literacy, and to prepare preschoolers for successful transition to mainstream elementary school classes.

Graduate clinicians are given the opportunity to spend one semester in LEAP and gain experience in developing and implementing a language-based pre-school curriculum, providing individual diagnostic and treatment services for pre-school children, and participating in research on phonological awareness training in speech/language disordered youngsters.

The Maryland Association of Higher Education awarded LEAP the Distinguished Program Award in 1997 for LEAP’s contribution to Maryland’s language disordered children and for training.

In April 2002 LEAP was selected as a model preschool reading program by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.