Practicum Site:
I worked at the FluencyBank lab. The FluencyBank lab is run by Dr. Nan Bernstein Ratner and specializes in analyzing fluency in speech. Many different projects are run through this lab to analyze fluency. The lab functions on a government grant which is currently in the process of renewal.
How I Found the Site and the Site Supervisor & My Advice:
My major, Hearing and Speech Sciences, is a very small major. Due to the fact that University of Maryland is a research university many of the top Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists conduct their research here. I knew who Dr. Ratner was because one of my class textbooks had been written by her. HESP has a list of ongoing research projects to become involved in and her name and contact information was on the list. I was familiar with the name and her line of research so I decided to send her an email inquiring about a volunteer research position. I was extremely nervous and assumed that I would get no response; however, within a few hours she had personally emailed me back asking if I would be willing to schedule a zoom call with her.
If I had to give any advice, it would be to put yourself out there. The worst thing someone can say is no. I thought for certain that I would not be qualified to work in the FluencyBank Lab but Dr. Ratner personally took the time to encourage my participation. There are plenty of lists of opportunities so do not settle. Find something you are genuinely interested in and pursue it; it may lead to amazing opportunities in the future.
Tasks I Performed:
I began in the lab as a volunteer. I worked 5 hours a week to re-transcribe files from the 90’s to fit the new software. I had to recode utterances and add in parent speech. At the beginning of January, I was promoted from a volunteer to an on-contract worker. I completed similar tasks but on longer and more complex files. My hours increased from 5 hours to 10. It was around this time that I also was accepted into the Undergraduate HESP Honors Program and began conducting my independent research on Response-Time Latency (RTL) in parent-child interaction. To do this, I used the files I was already familiar with and evaluated sound waves to determine the amount of time between the end of a child’s utterance and the beginning of their parent’s utterance. Just recently, I was promoted again to Undergraduate Lab Coordinator. In this position I will still transcribe files; however, I am now responsible for training new members, uploading new files for analysis, keeping a master sheet of the files and the progress we have made on them alongside assigning files to the lab’s transcribers each week. I will also have to review the transcribers files before uploading them to the database.
What I Learned:
Due to developments in science, I assumed that most things have already been explored. What I learned in my experience was that there is so much left to be discovered. Almost any question can be turned into a research project. I thought that research was boring but when you put the research you have worked on into the statistics generator and see the results, it feels like Christmas morning. All you have to do is ask a question to the right person, and they can help you turn it into an entire research project. Overall, what I learned is that science is fun and that there is so much room for research. Regardless of what we know, there is still more to discover.
How Doing the Work Has Affected Me Beyond Science:
What appreciation was gained for the practical connections between Science and other parts of Society?
Especially in my experience, everything we do is for the betterment of society. We are trying to find answers for children who stutter and parents of children who stutter. Science finds answers for people who are desperately seeking answers. For example, slowing down speech is usually recommended to parents as a therapeutic approach for bettering fluency in children; however, there is no research on whether RTL influences recovery or persistence in children who stutter. For all of these years’ parents have felt that they factor into their child’s fluency disorders but we do not actually know, on a. longitudinal scale, how these suggestions affect the child’s fluency. This is what my research focuses on discovering. I have always wanted to help people; through research and science I can help more people than I ever could in a clinical setting.
How (if at all) you have modified your future plans at UMCP or your post-bachelors’ academic plans and career plans based on this experience?
I never thought that I would want a career in academia but after conducting research for the past year, I think that I may want to. I knew that I would want my master’s degree, but now I am debating also obtaining my PHD. The best way to help the maximum number of people I can in this lifetime is by conducting research and teaching the future how to help. I want to work in a clinical setting but I can still do that while also conducting research and teaching perspective SLP’s.