Speech-language pathology students win PRAXIS Bowl at annual Texas Speech-Hearing Association conference
For second-year Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology student Lauren Guerra and her teammates, competing in the PRAXIS Bowl — a high-energy, game-show-style competition held during the Texas Speech-Hearing Association 70th Annual Convention and Exhibition in Fort Worth in February — provided a chance to prove that their entire graduating class has what it takes to be excellent speech-language pathologists.
Guerra and three of her classmates — Caroline Fitzgerald, Kelsey Gutierrez and Tiffany Purl — faced student teams from across the state, fielding questions across the nine major areas of speech-language pathology covered in the profession’s licensing exam, the PRAXIS: articulation, fluency, voice and resonance, receptive and expressive language, hearing, swallowing, cognitive and social aspects of communication, and augmentative and alternative communication.
“The feeling of them putting us No. 1 was the best feeling ever,” Guerra said. “This was not just for us to win. This was for all 50 of us in the cohort to win. That feeling of us all being so happy after was so special.”
The team’s performance reflects the quality of the program, said Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Chair and Associate Professor Fang-Ling Lu, PhD, CCC-SLP, FASAHP.
“This marks the second championship our program students have achieved in our brief history,” Lu said. “We are incredibly proud of their accomplishments.”
MS in Speech-Language Pathology program alumni receive awards
In another nod to the program’s successful outcomes, three alumni of the Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology program received awards for career achievements and service at the conference, a remarkable achievement for a young program that has graduated just seven cohorts to date, Lu noted.
“Our students' achievements reflect the collective efforts of our faculty, staff and student cohorts,” Lu said. “The educational opportunities provided by our school and program faculty have clearly enabled our students and alumni to distinguish themselves among their peers.”
The alumni who received awards from the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation’s Cherry Wright Texas Educational Loan Support Trust were Kendall Adair (2020 cohort), Jennifer Olveda (2021 cohort), and Bertha Stephanie Kurman (2024 cohort). The trust provides awards to speech-language pathologists or audiologists who practice in a public school in Texas to pay student educational loans for graduate degrees accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Faculty and students engage in conference program
Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Education Angela Kennedy, SLP-D, CCC-SLP,facilitated a breakout session titled “More Than Mints and Nametags: A Guided ‘Speed-Networking’ Bootcamp (Pediatric School Age Learning Pathway),” as part of the conference’s keynote presentation.
Assistant Professor Cathy Torrington Eaton, PhD, CCC-SLP, co-presented a one-hour seminar titled “Debunking reimbursement myths about communication partner training in aphasia.”
Assistant Professor Michelle Parish, SLP-D, CCC-SLP, presented the poster “Grading Consistency in Graduate SLP Education: Comparing Human and ChatGPT Scores.”
Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology students Stephanie De Los Santos, Angela Guerrero and Kelsey Gutierrez presented a poster on research they conducted for a 2025 Community Engaged Learning grant-funded project. Their poster presentation was titled “LAUNCH: Caregivers' Knowledge and Confidence in Language and Literacy Using Game-Based Methods. Kennedy and Parish were faculty mentors the project.