This declaration and dedication for you alumni speech and language and audiology heroes of Communicative Disorders, is now and forever, one of truth and reality.
Perhaps you came to study at UW-Stevens Point determined to become a specialist who could help the handicapped, and it was communicative disorders wherein you became enwrapped.
As students, whichever years, through osmosis you absorbed knowledge and skills, doing so from the ComD administrators, teaching faculty, supervisors, technicians and secretaries, doing so without a need for many headache pills. The ComD trainers at UWSP felt proud in their heart, knowing they were giving you a career direction and a jumpstart.
As a graduate you got a job that probably did not make you rich, and then maybe tried a few different positions, seeking your career niche.
In time, you found your professional role without life’s plights taking too large a toll. To cite a small list, maybe you did so as a college professor or supervisor, an administrator, a hospital clinician, a home trainer, or a hearing aid specialist.
But everyone knows, as do hundreds of clientele who would insist, that you mostly did it as a clinic or public school speech-language pathologist or audiologist. You worked day in and day out, year in and year out, decade in and decade out, to help the communicatively handicapped without a doubt. Shunning notoriety, you made many speechless and hearing impaired persons whole, readying them to face the challenges of society. Without need for special legislation, you fashioned your mark in the history of special education.
With a hop, and a skip, and a jump, and a couple of years, you turned yourselves into our professional peers. And so it is easy for everyone to decree, thousands of you are heroes of ComD. Indeed, thousands more alumni of the future will follow your lead. We teachers and supervisors, and all of our peers, over all of the years, commend you, salute you, honor you, and congratulate you for what you have accomplished the last 50 years. Our admiration for you and thanks to you is endless.
So let me reiterate, since that hop, skip, jump, and a couple of years, we are proud that you have been our professional peers.
Written by one of the founding fathers of the UW-Stevens Point Communicative Disorders Jerry Chappell