Script Draft: Speech and Hearing Sciences major

There are over 250 undergraduate majors to choose from at Arizona State University. Speech and hearing sciences is one of these choices. Speech and hearing sciences is a Bachelor of Science degree. In this major, students study the normal aspects of the communication process. There is specific focus in anatomy and physiology of the hearing mechanism, speech, language, and hearing science, and the human communication system, including normal development of speech and language. Students can take classes for the speech and hearing science major on the Tempe Campus of ASU. There are about thirty professors who lecture for the classes required for this major. This program is a stepping-stone for students to become graduates in audiology or speech language pathology.

Unfortunately, not everyone can afford the time and money it will take to obtain a graduate degree in audiology or speech language pathology, moving further than the initial BS in speech and hearing sciences. Upon declaring as a speech and hearing science major my advisor informed me that there are not many job opportunities other than becoming an assistant to an audiologist or an assistant to a speech language pathologist unless students go on to obtain an AuD or Master’s degree. I have found, after interviewing a number of professors who lecture within this major that this is true. Therefore, I think it is very important for all of the advisors to inform students of this commitment before they declare their major in speech and hearing sciences.

            My advisor, Tiffanie Flores, did just that. I had a meeting with her to declare my major and she informed me, “with the speech and hearing sciences bachelors of science degree, a student can move on from college to become an assistant to a speech language pathologist or that of an audiologist. After the bachelor’s degree students can obtain a Master’s degree to become a Speech Language pathologist or they can obtain a doctorate degree in Audiology.”

            After my meeting with Mrs. Flores and coming out with that supporting information, I decided to get more, and maybe more credible advice, from some professors who teach in the speech and hearing department at ASU. Dawn Greer, a clinical associate professor, who specializes in speech language pathology, had this to say, “To be a certified speech language pathologist and not an assistant you would need to pursue a masters degree, not a PhD. If you are interested in becoming an audiologist, then you need an AuD, which is a doctorate degree.”

I interviewed other speech and hearing sciences professors, for a further opinion, who all had the same advice. Professor William Yost says, “You do need a graduate degree to be a clinician but not a doctorate in all cases.”

Professor Zarin Mehta repeats the same advice and does so in further detail. She says, “The audiology program does have an entry-level clinical doctorate which is a four year doctorate but not a PhD. There is no Master’s degree offered for audiology anymore, so the default degree in an AuD, the clinical doctorate. The SLP is a two-year Master’s degree and you can certainly become a practicing SLP with the Master’s degree.

With each professor giving advice all alike, it is quite obvious that students cannot be more than assistants to audiologists or speech language pathologists with just the bachelors of science in speech and hearing sciences. They would need to obtain further degrees in audiology or speech language pathology, such as a Master’s degree or an AuD, which is a clinical doctorate. Informing students of this information before they declare their major is essential because the clarity of the commitment might sway a student’s decision to declare.