Elijah Evans<\/a>
\nPosted on August 28, 2015<\/p>\n
\nDr. Brenda Bender didn\u2019t have any interest in speech pathology in 1986 as a freshman. Twenty nine\u00a0years and two degrees later, she is the teacher of the year in the communication sciences and disorders department.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to make a difference in how we educate masters level speech pathologists,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBender, associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, was named Teacher of the Year at graduation last May. When she was announced as the recipient of the award at graduation, her students gave her a standing ovation. Even today, several months after graduation, several of her former students warmly recall Dr. Bender\u2019s teaching prowess and enthusiastically emphasize her kindness and patience.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cShe was someone who would always go above and beyond to help her students,\u201d said Becca Clay, who graduated from the Speech-Language Pathology masters program in the spring and was Dr. Bender\u2019s graduate assistant for two years. \u201cShe was an extra-mile teacher, for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAfter getting her masters at the University of North Texas in 1994, she worked in the speech pathology field for about five years before she decided to pursue her doctorate at the University of Memphis.<\/span><\/p>\nThe speech pathology field has\u00a0a\u00a0shortage of doctorate level and Ph.D.-trained faculty, Bender said. <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAfter the department chair at ACU contacted Bender and offered her a position, she came onto faculty at ACU in 2001. She started teaching in January of 2002, just after ACU established the graduate program. She served as the department chair from 2006 through spring 2015, while teaching graduate classes, investigating speech disorders and continuing to treat patients.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cTeaching is my vocation,\u201d Bender said. \u201cI come from a long line of teachers, so as a speech pathologist you use those skills of teaching with patients. I think that my job is to help another person to understand the world and themselves better than when they came in the door that day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe relies on a multitude of techniques to achieve her goals with her patients, and\u00a0she also utilizes a variety of activities in the classroom to help her students. Not only is she honest with her students, she also uses fun, hands-on activities to engage her students, Clay said.<\/span><\/p>\nDr. Bender\u2019s teaching philosophy is driven by her belief that we are all \u201ccreated for communication\u201d and that \u201ceveryone in the classroom is learning.\u201d These two guiding principles mean that she engages her students every day and learns alongside them in every class.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNot only is she an incredible professor, but she demonstrates the compassion necessary to engage the world as a passionate speech-language pathologist,\u201d wrote\u00a0Jordan Hanson, who graduated in the spring after receiving a Master\u2019s of Science in Speech-Language Pathology. \u201cShe instilled the idea of compassionately loving our patients and going the extra mile for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe new department chair Dr. Terry Baggs highlighted Dr. Bender\u2019s non-traditional teaching and departmental insightfulness.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cShe has not only been a good administrator, she demonstrates excellent teaching skills,\u201d Dr. Terry Baggs said. \u201cShe has been a good example to all of us on how we can think outside the box in terms of teaching.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBoth\u00a0Clay and Hanson emphasized Dr. Bender\u2019s classroom vigor and authenticity, and Dr. Baggs agreed.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the reasons she\u2019s teacher of the year, because she\u2019s not a traditional teacher,\u201d he said. \u201cShe helps a student not only gain the knowledge, but the skills they need to be a speech pathologist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nDr. Bender will continue to open her students\u2019 minds, tune their ears to speech and treat patients in need of her help. But her impact is not just educational. Because she determinedly invests in her students, she also makes a lasting impact on them.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe are all proud of her,\u201d Clay said. \u201cI miss her and wish she was still my professor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We could not have been more proud\u00a0of our own Brenda Bender when she was honored as\u00a0Teacher of the Year during the May 2015 Commencement ceremony. \u00a0While we could elaborate extensively about her talents and skills, the following article from the Optimist\u00a0provides an excellent overview of her story. Enjoy the read and maybe drop Brenda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Bender\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/communication-disorders\/files\/2015\/10\/Bender-294x490.jpg\")
We could not have been more proud\u00a0of our own Brenda Bender when she was honored as\u00a0Teacher of the Year during the May 2015 Commencement ceremony. \u00a0While we could elaborate extensively about her talents and skills, the following article from the Optimist<\/em>\u00a0provides an excellent overview of her story. Enjoy the read and maybe drop Brenda a note of congratulations!<\/p>\n