Speech and Hearing Clinic

The UAMS College of Health Professions Speech and Hearing Clinic is located in the Education South Building. The clinic is part of the UAMS College of Health Professions Doctor of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology academic programs, which are accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Council on Academic Accreditation. All services at the clinic are provided by graduate students under the direct supervision of ASHA-certified faculty. 

The clinic provides clinical opportunities for students to learn about speech, language, literacy, hearing, and balance evaluations tailored to individual client needs. A wide array of diagnostic equipment and materials makes it possible to evaluate communication problems experienced by clients of any age, from infants to adults. Based on evaluation results, student clinicians work with clients, parents, and families to develop appropriate, functional treatment plans. In addition to providing diagnostic services, students may also provide speech, language, and audiological rehabilitation on an individual or group basis. Students will also gain experience in hearing aid and assistive listening device selection, fitting, and follow-up services for patients.  

The Speech and Hearing Clinic is open for clinical services Monday through Thursday while academic classes are in session. Since the UAMS academic calendar is followed, there are breaks between semesters and for certain holidays. 

View a Google map to the clinic 

Audiological Services 

Diagnostic Services: Students provide a full range of audiological diagnostic services. These services are offered for children and adults suspected of having hearing and/or balance difficulties, including tinnitus (ringing in the ears), auditory processing disorders, and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials. 

Hearing Aid Services: Students obtain experience in comprehensive hearing aid services. Individual listening needs and personal preferences are taken into consideration when recommending and selecting amplification systems. Students provide patients and their significant others a thorough orientation in the use of their hearing instruments and well as instruction on the care and maintenance of the equipment and follow-up appointments.  In addition to these services students also provide counseling on other assistive listening devices.  

Audiologic Rehabilitation: Students are equipped to provide individualized instruction to enhance the communication skills of persons with hearing differences. Instruction focuses on maximizing use of residual hearing through amplification and/or assistive listening devices, auditory training, using visual cues (speech reading and gestures), and utilizing communication repair strategies. Sessions, led by students, can be provided on an individual basis for either short- or long-term rehabilitation, and are geared to each individual’s specific communication needs. 

Speech-Language Services 

Diagnostic Services: Students provide a full range of diagnostic speech and language services for persons of any age with disorders in the following areas: articulation, receptive and expressive language, cognition, fluency, voice and resonance, swallowing and pragmatic language. Following the evaluation, students provide results and recommendations. 

Individual Therapy Sessions: Students provide individual speech, language, and literacy therapy sessions for clients of all ages.  

Group Therapy Opportunities: Students have the opportunity to work with their peers and clients in the following groups. 

• Nurturing Expression through Speech Therapy (NEST): This is a preschool program for children ages 18 months to five years with speech and language delays for four to six hours each week. Students may work with Baby Birds, which serves clients 18 months to three years, or Reddie Birds, which serves clients three to five years. Students provide activities designed to develop personal-social, cognitive, and fine and gross motor skills, in addition to communication and pre-literacy skills. 

• Social Communication Groups: These groups stress the appropriate use of language in social interactions. Students gain experiences in a variety of groups that are divided by age and the clients who attend work on such skills as good listening, turn-taking, topic maintenance, problem solving, discourse management, and other conversational rules and nonverbal behaviors. 

• Aphasia Group: This group is composed of adults who have aphasia, motor speech disorders, or other speech and language problems caused by stroke, brain surgery, or neuromuscular diseases. Students design therapy sessions to help clients become more functional communicators in a supportive group therapy environment and in their daily activities. All communication modalities are targeted in the group activities. 

• TLC Gender Affirming Communication Group: The TLC group affords students experience with transgender and nonbinary clients who want to seek help in modifying their voice and communication to better express their true gender. Students help clients target goals to raise or lower the pitch of their voice, change how they use pitch and loudness to communicate (intonation), change the resonance of their voice, and change their nonverbal communication (body language). Additionally, the clients are taught how to take care of their voice and use it safely. Each graduate student clinician is paired with a client to perform an initial voice assessment and then work with the client in setting their communication goals.  

• Literacy Group: This group is allows students to help clients improve literacy skills in students in grades K-5 who demonstrate difficulty with reading (decoding and word-identification), comprehension, and spelling. Clinical teaching centers around phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension utilizing a multi-sensory approach incorporating elements from Orton-Gillingham-based programs to build clinical skills with literacy in a fun and effective learning environment. 

• Accent Management Group: This group is composed of adults who seek out services to reduce, change, or modify their communication (e.g. speaking, understanding speech, reading, and writing). Accents are variations in speech characterized by differences in speech patterns (phonological and prosodic) that are perceived from any regional, standard, native, or dialectal form of speech. These variations may affect intelligibility. Students are taught to deliver activities to help clients manage their goals. Individuals may elect to seek this service to improve intelligibility, modify an accent, improve written intelligibility, and improve use of common idioms. This group allows students to teach communication skills and encourage clients to share their experiences with others by allowing time for group therapy time and to address more individual goals during individual therapy time. Depending on the needs of the community, the number of groups and group sizes vary.  

Supervision of all student clinicians is provided by full-time departmental faculty and part-time adjunct faculty, all of whom hold the Arkansas Board of Examiners license in either speech-language pathology or audiology and the ASHA Certificate of Clinical Competence in speech pathology and/or audiology. Client services are provided by graduate students. The faculty members work closely with the student clinicians to ensure clients are receiving the best in quality care.