Spring 2009 Classes

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Melanie

The semester is over, so it’s time for my update of the semester. This semester was probably my busiest one so far with 4 classes and clinic. My classes this semester included Fluency, Traumatic Brain Injury, Aphasia, and Dysphagia. Technically I should have taken Aphasia and Dysphagia last year, but they had to be postponed due to schedule conflicts.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) was a good class. Typically, students take a class in Childhood Apraxia of Speech, but because most of my classmates are interested in the medical setting and they did not get much of an aphasia class, Apraxia was replaced.  TBI was taught by the director of the clinic who worked several years with this population. The teacher doesn’t have a doctorate, so she has to get special permission to teach. This is the same teacher we had for Motor Speech Disorders last year. She is still one of the best teacher’s I’ve had. In the class we learned about cognitive communication disorders (impairments in memory, executive functioning, and attention) that result from a TBI and how to treat people with these impairments. It is an interesting field, but very heartbreaking to see individuals with injuries that have caused such damage to the brain.

Fluency (or Stuttering) was somewhat boring. The teacher is a retired professor who came back to teach the class since the department lacks someone with expertise in this area. The man who taught our class has been a speech therapist for at least 50 years. He personally knew a lot of the big names in the field of stuttering.

Aphasia was one of the best classes I’ve taken. The teacher was also a retired professor. Because of a previous obligation, she agreed to teach the class only if she could be finished by the middle of April. As a result, we had class 5 hours a week. While it was intense, it was wonderful to get all that free time in April. Aphasia is an impairment in speaking, listening, reading, or writing that a person can have after a stroke in the language area of the brain. We learned about the different types of aphasia. This is such a fascinating field. Aphasia can differ. The person may not be able to talk much at all but can comprehend fairly well, the person may talk but nothing he says makes sense and he can’t comprehend very well, the person may be able to talk normally (what he says makes sense) with an impaired ability to repeat,  or a person may be unable to talk normally but be able to repeat. Of course each type of aphasia can be to varying degrees and levels for each person. I am interested in working some more with people with aphasia.

Dysphagia (swallowing disorders) was taught by an adjunct teacher. She works part time at a hospital in Roanoke. She’s taught the class almost every year since she graduated with her master’s. She was a good teacher and really knew her material. It was amazing to learn how everything works and comes together to make a swallow occur. It was even more amazing to realize all that has to happen happens so fast. I won’t mention the specifics here, but if you are interested just ask me. We also learned how to treat people who have problems with swallowing. I decided I’m not very interested in this field. I don’t want to be looking in people’s mouths at their unchewed food, hearing them choke, cleaning out their mouths, etc.

Well, that’s a brief summary about my classes this semester. I was able to get an A in all of my classes. The good news is that I have completed all of my classes for my Master’s degree! I’m very happy about that. I have 7 credits and 2 externships left. I will do a 5 credit externship this summer in a medical setting and a 2 credit externship this fall in a school setting. I am taking the Praxis 2 exam on June 13 and will have a comprehensive exam in the fall. I’m looking forward to graduating on December 18, 2009.

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Philosophers’ World Cup

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Andrew

I had never seen this before, but it cracks me up.

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Creative poll interpretation?

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Andrew

A recent Rasmussen poll seems very odd to me. According to the survey, 53% of Americans think that capitalism is better than socialism. Considering just that tidbit, it seems like America is experiencing a significant ideological shift.

But when you look a little more, only 20% say that socialism is better than capitalism, and 27% “don’t know.” Rasumussen specifically notes that they didn’t define either term, which leads me to think that this poll might be a better indicator of Americans’ economic understanding than their ideological stance. Rasmussen cites another poll in which 70% of respondents prefer “free markets” over some alternative. Rasmussen interprets this as evidence that Americans aren’t convinced that are markets are free. It might just as well mean that people don’t know what capitalism is, and don’t know what free markets are1.

It is also interesting that socialism is far more popular among younger people. Perhaps many of the older generations remember the Cold War better, and because they lived then, have a better handle on the differences between capitalism and socialism. It could also be that older people typically have more “skin in the game” and thus actually care enough about economic policies to know their preferences.

It seems that the headline tries to shock by suggesting that support for capitalism is weak. In fact, the details seem to suggest that economic understanding is weak. A comparison to an earlier poll with the same questions would help, but it looks like Rasmussen might be trying for a shock value without much backup.


  1. The term “free” has a strong emotive appeal in America, and people often will gravitate toward things that are “free” regardless of whether the thing is actually “free”. One wonders how people would respond if the term were “liberal economics.” back↩
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Hiking after storms

Posted on April 5, 2009 by Andrew

We’ve had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, so we thought it might be neat to see the Little Stony Creek and the Cascades. We figured there might be some more water than usual. Uh, yeah.

In all, we hiked about 6 miles. The trail was often pretty muddy, but the weather was beautiful. The gorge that the creek runs through helped keep the wind off us and the temperature was perfect for hiking.

It’s actually a little hard to compare pictures to get an idea of how much more water there was, because the extra volume changes how the river actually looks. I can’t even tell where I took some of the pictures anymore, and for some, I couldn’t get to the place that I shot from in the past.

Anyway, if you’re ever up our way and want to go, we’d be more than happy to take you. :-)

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Awesome photo

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Andrew

Mt. Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska, has been rumbling quite a bit recently.

I thought these two pictures were very cool.

Redoubt eruption from space

Redoubt eruption from space

 

Redoubt eruption from an airplane

Redoubt eruption from an airplane

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A degree in creationism in Texas?

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Andrew

A recent story on FoxNews describes a Texas legislator’s attempt to allow the Institute for Creation Research to award a Master of Science degree.  It appears that the bill would exempt certain types of non-profit educational institutions from regulation by the state higher education board.

In particular, it seems that ICR is the intended beneficiary of this change, which apparently would allow them to grant the M.S. without state permission or regulation.

Some thoughts:

It is in a sense unfortunate that education has become such a political football. I have absolutely no problem with the state controlling education in a limited sense. It is in the interest of the state to do so. However, the politicization of education means that serious discussions about its goals and procedures will be heavily colored by political rhetoric. Again, the political rhetoric is necessary in the abstract, but modern American political rhetoric is simply too weak to substantively address the weight of a robust educational debate.

I don’t know that I would support this bill. On the one hand, I think it would be a good thing if ICR could issue an M.S. It sounds like much of the opposition is ideological — the education board doesn’t want to condone, or possibly even permit, creationism. But the bill would have far wider consequences. Basically it would allow non-profit, non-government-funded schools to invent and issue whatever degrees they wish. Eugenie Scott, quoted in the FoxNews article, makes this very point, and with good support.

It sounds like ICR is appealing to the state board for the right to issue the degree under the current statute. I think this is the route to take. I’m sure the state representative is well-meaning, but I fear that his approach is likely to further discredit schools like ICR.

In the news article, Scott claims that ICR’s offering is vastly inferior to UT’s or Baylor’s. According to his article, his primary concern is the ICR position that the Earth is only about 10,000 years old. I fail to see how this point is relevant, except in the sense that it treats seriously a view that a fairly decent percentage of Americans actually hold.

I would be curious to see exactly how ICR is pursuing their court appeal with the state board — on what grounds to they claim the right to issue the degree?

So it seems there are actually two issues here. First, ICR claims the right to some sort of equal protection/fairness for their views, religious though they may be. I tend to side with them on this point, at least in a qualified, theoretical sense. Second, the bill at hand proposes to vastly expand the powers non-profit groups to award state-recognized degrees. I tend to oppose this point. It is not in the interest of the state or most of its citizens to devalue degrees. But it looks like several critics of the bill are conflating these two points. They recognize the impact of the bill, but they can’t seem to get away from their instinctive opposition to a creationist perspective. I think the best solution would be for the state to find a way to objectively assess the quality of ICR’s program, without any prejudice for or against a religious position and its implications, and then to grant or deny the degree based on the assessment. The bill is too much

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Getting It to Christian Students

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Andrew

Summit Ministries as a couple of very good articles about teaching a Christian worldview (Part 1 and Part 2).

A quote that particularly struck me:

There simply is no substitute here for equipping students to dive deeply into the Scriptures. At the same time, however, it is important to help them dive into the Scriptures in the right way. Unfortunately, many students have only seen the Bible handled poorly by other Christians. Often, their only experience with the Scriptures include it being replaced by therapeutic clichés, utilized and memorized completely out of context, tacked on but not central to a lesson, strangely pieced together with other verses to make a point, proof-texted to supplement a devotional book or song lyric, or largely ignored.

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The failed policies of the past

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Andrew

President Obama seems to be floating a logical contradiction. He derides the Republicans for spending too much in the last 8 years, claiming that they now have no right to accuse him of excessive spending. But if the “policies of the past” have been too much spending, how does more spending become a break with the past? Note below

October 21, 2008 (on TARP)

It’s an economic proposal that does nothing to rebuild our economy, but everything to continue the same failed policies of the past eight years – when speculators gamed the system, regulators looked the other way, and lobbyists bought their way into our government. It’s the same failed politics of decrying greed on Wall Street one minute, and then rewarding that greed the next minute with tax cuts for Wall Street corporations and CEOs.1 It’s the same failed philosophy: give more and more to those with the most and hope prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

Note the shift from October to February. No longer does he decry the “failed policies.” Now he calls them “failed theories.” Nice shift. It lets him ignore what actually happened while attacking the Republicans’ stated philosophy. Thus, since his philosophy is different (so he says), he can claim to be breaking from the past.

Feb 9, 2009 (Press Conference)

“What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed. And that’s part of what the election in November was all about. Okay?”

“When I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history….when they start characterizing this as pork without acknowledging that there are no earmarks2 in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.”

“When it comes to how we approach the issue of fiscal responsibility, again, it’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks, about this recovery package, after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”

The Republicans’ lack of discipline is coming back to bite them, but at this point, I suspect the American public is less interested in the errors of the past and more interested in the prospects of economic improvement. Isn’t that what this whole “looking forward” approach is all about?


  1. At least he’s not doing this anymore. Wall Street execs are going to get slammed, even as he decries their greed. back↩
  2. Definition, please? I don’t think many people really believe this line. back↩
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Just a word now

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Andrew

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a comical gaffe while arguing for the stimulus/spending/pork bill currently on its way through Congress. She claimed that 500 million Americans would lose their jobs every month until this bill passed (or something like that anyway).

Though the plausibility of her claim is suspect — there are only about 350 million Americans, and not all of them work — it actually illustrates a problem that this kind of bill creates.  At some point, the number becomes just a word. It no longer refers to a concept that people can get their minds around. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, commented this week that if you started on the day Jesus was born and spent 1 million (that’s 1,000,000) dollars each day until now, you still wouldn’t have spent 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) dollars. A trillion dollars is huge, but it’s hard to get your mind around how huge. The graph here tries to illustrate. The blue column represents 1 trillion. The column to the left is 1 billion. You can barely see it. The gray columns are the logarithm of the numbers across the bottom. I think people tend to think of big number more like the gray bars indicate. A trillion is bigger than a billion, but it’s not that much bigger.

How big is a trillion?

How big is a trillion?

Will all of that, it’s easier to understand why Speaker Pelosi was having trouble. She’s throwing around all these numbers all the time, but like most people, she only half-way understand them. They’re just words now, so an extra billion here or there is just another digit. My thought is that we ought to be very cautious when those who want to spend our money aren’t careful to understand what they’re spending. But more than that, we ought to make sure that we understand ourselves, so that we don’t have to depend on politicians to explain what they’re doing.

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Fall Clinic

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Melanie

Well, now that the new semester has started I’ll write about clinic last semester.

I had two clients last semester. Both were nonverbal. The irony of it struck me at the end of the semester… I was doing speech therapy on two people that couldn’t speak!

My first client was an almost four year old girl with autism. She has been coming to the clinic for several years. She seems to have the  intellectual functioning of about a 1-2 year old.  She is a pretty girl and sweet until she doesn’t get her way. When she doesn’t get what she wants she throws a tantrum and screams and cries. Thankfully she is not violent. She constently hummed and experimented with her voice using vowels. I found out at the end of the semester that’s typical with autism. Because her communication was so limited she would take my arm and direct it toward an object she wanted but couldn’t get to. She loved bubbles and would smile and laugh and pop them for hours if allowed. I worked with her alone one hour a week. During that time we worked on getting her to look to request. I would deny the object or action until she looked at me. This often resulted in her crying. One hour a week she was in a group session with another autistic girl the same age. Another client was a 29 year old non-verbal boy with Rubenstein Taybi syndrome at about a 5 year old cognitive level. We had some fun experiences in group therapy!

My second client was a 66 year old woman. She had a stroke in 2001 and a stroke on the other side of her brain in 2005. She has aphasia (cognitive impairment), apraxia (no volitional control in motor planning and sequencing), and dysarthria (muscle weakness). Due to the apraxia and dysarthria she couldn’t speak. She had a laptop with some programs on it to help her communicate, but she wasn’t very good with it. Her husband really wanted her to be able to speak. During the semester we worked on oral motor muscle exercises to increase muscle strength, vowel sounds and typing on her laptop. She greatly improved on her communication speed with her laptop. She worked very hard and was a good client to have.  Oh by the way, she was trilingual and taught Spanish and French before her stroke (Spanish is her first language).

So, although I had some tough clients, I learned a great deal from having them. This semester I have two boys, and I will be working with them on articulation and stuttering. That is about all I know since I just got the assignment today. Hopefully I won’t wait until the summer to post about them!

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