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Summer internship fuels a graduating senior’s mission to diversify speech therapy

Summer internship fuels a graduating senior’s mission to diversify speech therapy

Emma Baby stands with her research poster.
Emma Baby shares her research.

TCNJ senior Emma Baby played with emotions and language this summer as a research assistant at New York University’s LEARN — Language Experience and Acquisition Research at NYU — Lab.

Joining a team of interns from colleges and universities around the country, Baby, a speech pathology and audiology major, received hands-on research experience coding and analyzing video data of young children performing a word-learning task. Adapted from a study created by a PhD student at the lab, her group investigated whether boys and girls differ in their ability to learn new words associated with different emotions.

The team reviewed over 500 videos of 52 participants, and Baby said the results were unexpected.

“We found no differences between the genders, which was surprising because we expected girls to outperform boys given their generally higher emotional competence,” she said.

Her time in the LEARN Lab was part of a six-week paid program called Summer Health Academic Research Experience in Communication Sciences and Disorders, or SHARE-CSD, which provides students with research skills and preparation for applying to — and succeeding in — graduate school.

Baby, a speech pathology and audiology major with a minor in deaf studies, says that the internship gave her practical experience in her field of study and leadership experience working on a diverse team.

“Working on this project taught me a lot about delegating tasks and working with different ideas and styles,” she said.

Diversity is a common thread for Baby, who plans to pursue a master’s degree and explore research opportunities, particularly in neurodiverse communities. She says she has become aware of the need for greater diversity within the field and that her background as an Indian American fuels her passion for focusing on culturally diverse families in her future work as a speech-language pathologist. She’s currently working with TCNJ special education professor Shridevi Rao on a manuscript about how SLPs should best work with children with Autism and culturally diverse families.

“It’s important to focus on racial and ethnic diversity and neurodiversity, too,” she said. “Patients and families may feel a deeper connection and understanding with an SLP of color. I often choose clinicians who share my ethnicity or are people of color for this very reason.”


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