Department Sees Firsts

by   |  10.13.14  |  Uncategorized

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The new academic year has seen some firsts in CSD. For this academic year, the graduate program received 186 applications for the program, up from 134 for the previous year. From this number, the faculty selected a new class of 23 graduate students. Added to the second year cohort, the program is at an all-time high of 47 graduate students. These numbers represent more than 100% growth in the past six years! Solid growth is also seen in the undergraduate program with 28 new freshman majors this year and a total undergrad enrollment of 127. This was also the first year that ACU grads were outnumbered in the first year graduate class with 70% coming from other universities. These students hail from California, Washington, Iowa, Indiana, Georgia, and other Texas schools. This diversity brings a plethora of experiences, perspectives, and wisdom.

With positive growth comes some growing pains. No longer do all of our undergrad classes fit in the department classrooms. And, we are expanding our clinical experiences and staff to meet a growing needs for clinical hours. In the past two years, we have added an additional full time clinical faculty member, Rachel Smith, a part time clinical supervisor, Sue Postelwait, and a full time administrative coordinator at our on campus clinic, Autum McNeill.

These firsts represents ACU’s desire to meet the growing need for speech-language pathologists in the workplace while continuing to maintain personal attention with a Christian world view.