Do you know someone who has or had Parkinson's disease, cerebral palsy, ALS, autism, Alzheimer's disease, a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, a hearing impairment, cochlear implant, a cleft lip and/or palate, dyslexia, stuttering, or head and neck cancer?
Imagine what would happen if they needed treatment from a speech-language pathologist or an audiologist but were unable to find one. Such a scenario is possible under the current CLAS budget proposal that is in the provost's and president's hands. This proposal contains two potential outcomes for the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
The first proposal is a merger with the Communicative Disorders department in the College of Public Health and Health Professions, which our Student Body fully supports. The second proposal is the complete elimination of our CSD department. We cannot foresee a future where research on and services to these populations cannot be provided.
Eliminating our program should never have been proposed, as the justification for its closure was not based on its weakness - it is a highly nationally ranked program. Our program will likely go from excellent to premiere with this merger. There is simply no alternative.
Merging the two departments makes sense and will help to advance research and clinical work within our field at UF. By merging these programs, UF will maintain our high quality of research and will strive for economic efficiency in the spirit of the upper administration's edict.
As demand for jobs within our field grows, UF must continue to provide our nation with high quality speech-language pathologists and audiologists. Through our passion for our field to move our department forward, we will continue to do whatever we can to let the university know that we won't tolerate elimination.
