Kathryn Blankenship, Middle Tennessee State University professor in the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology program, and Victoria Trevino, a program senior who plans to pursue medical school, were guests on this month’s “Out of the Blue” television magazine program to discuss the program and its opportunities for undergraduate research. 

“We’re one of the few undergraduate-only programs in the state,” Blankenship told host Andrew Oppmann, MTSU’s vice president for marketing and communications. “We prepare our students to be a speech-language pathologist or audiologist, and we’re pre-professional, which means they have to go on for either a master’s degree in speech-language audiology or a clinical doctorate in audiology.”

The program also houses the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, “a full running clinic” that provides students with in-depth experiential learning opportunities. 

“They (students) get clients, and they get the exposure and experience of actually planning for the client, writing up the notes, interacting with the families…” Blankenship said.

You can view the segment below: 

Trevino said her favorite aspect of the major has been the research experience. 

“I didn’t know how to do it,” said Trevino about first approaching Blankenship. “I didn’t even know if I could do it, and I’ve been privileged to…. I’ve ran the study, ran participants, given standardized tests, looked at the data, crunched numbers, and now we’re in the process of hopefully publishing our study, which is really exciting. So, it really has been a privilege to work in every level of the research.”

The episode wrapped up with Trevino emphasizing the importance of research for improving outcomes through data-backed investigation, and Blankenship spotlighting more of her students’ recent accomplishments including a new internal grant coordinated through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, award-winning research publications and more. 

“Out of the Blue” is available anytime on the university’s YouTube channel, the True Blue TV channel, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. It also airs on Murfreesboro cable Channel 9 daily at 6 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; NewsChannel5+ at 3:30 p.m. Sundays and on other cable outlets in Middle Tennessee, so check local listings. 

It is also available as a podcast on iTunes and Google Play and as individual interview segments on Spotify at https://spoti.fi/453hxg3. 

Watch previous episodes of “Out of the Blue” at https://mtsunews.com/out-of-the-blue.  

— Stephanie Wagner (Stephanie.Wagner@mtsu.edu)