Information for Summer 3 Students

You don’t really need a code so much as you need consent from the office in order to register for 602. The office will grant consent to enroll in 602 when the following completed paperwork has been received at speech@nau.edu: (1) Information for Practicum/Externship, (2) Registration Checklist for 602 and 608 students, (3) attached documentation demonstrating renewal of expired checklist items; (3) attached vaccination waivers, if applicable, and (4) the Student Responsibility Statement (this last form is required only for registration in Practicum 1). All paperwork can be found on the CSD Forms page, under “602 and 608 Required Forms”. Once the office has checked to ensure that forms are complete, they will grant access to 602, which will be confirmed with an email to you. You may register at that time.

No, but you do have to take the Praxis in order to enroll for Externship (CSD 608). It is hoped that all students will pass the Praxis by the time they graduate.

Students may attempt to take the comprehensive exam twice. If after the second attempt, the student has not obtained a 70% or better, a remediation plan will be put in place for the student to support areas of challenge.

Yes, absolutely – virtually all students do P1 and P2 at their place of employment. Understand, however, that many states require that clinical rotations take place in 3 settings to provide a sufficient breadth and depth of clinical experience. Potential settings can include preschool, elementary school, high school, self-contained classrooms, early intervention, home health services, clinics, and more. Many students discover that they are already employed in multiple settings while others find that their supervisors are employed in multiple settings, and arrange their schedules such that they can obtain clockhours with their supervisor at more than one site. Obtaining clockhours in a setting in which you are not employed will require the existence of an affiliation agreement between NAU and the site; this should be discussed well in advance of the clinical rotation with your student advisor, to ensure that an affiliation agreement can be obtained prior to the start of the clinical rotation. For private practices and clinics, please notify your student advisor a minimum of 6 weeks in advance; for hospitals and inpatient facilities, 9-12 months notice is required to ensure sufficient time to establish an affiliation agreement.

ASHA (as well as CSD) requires a total of 400 clinical clockhours across all clinical experiences (P1, P2, and externship together). A total of 25 of these hours are pre-practicum observation hours, and 325 of the remaining hours must be completed at the graduate level. This means that 50 hours can be undergraduate treatment hours (i.e., clinical interaction hours obtained during SLPA licensure). There are no minimal hours required for Practicum 1 or 2 – it is only necessary to have a minimum of 400 total hours at the end of Externship.

Yes, ASHA has amended its policy with regard to the requirement for clinical experience across all 9 domains (hearing, articulation, voice & resonance, expressive/receptive language, fluency, AAC, cognitive aspects of communication, social aspects of communication) – it is now a requirement that students obtain clockhours in all areas (see “Implementation” under Standard V-B of the 2020 Revisions). Here are a few ideas to help get the depth and breadth of clinical experience required:

1. Think carefully about the hours that you are logging – resist the urge to just log everything as “expressive/receptive language”, for instance. If you are working on pragmatic skills such as eye contact, turn taking, polite requests, creating communication opportunities, ineffectual social skills, or challenging behaviors with a child, these qualify as “social aspects of communication”. If you’re working with a child on sequencing, memory, attention, problem-solving, or executive function, your hours qualify as “cognitive aspects of communication”. If you’re working with a child with a repaired cleft on hypernasality or a child with autism on intonation, for instance, these hours can be logged as “voice and resonance”. If you are working with a child with a hearing impairment, services will qualify as aural rehab or “hearing treatment”. Note that hearing screenings count as “hearing evaluation”. If you are using signs (gestures), PECS, or picture charts with students, this can be counted as AAC. Make sure that you give yourself full credit for the domain in which you are treating the people that you see.
2. You may need to advocate for certain kinds of clinical experiences. There are often children who use AAC, have fluency problems, have hearing impairments, etc. in school settings — request to work with these children. Ask your supervisor if s/he can help you obtain hours that you need. Supervisors can be surprisingly helpful if they know you need to work with certain kinds of students/clients.
3. At CSD, we will be trying to offer alternative clinical experiences to help with areas in which students are having problems getting hours.

Not only are you allowed to evaluate students, ASHA expects you to engage in evaluation-related activities. While taking CSD 602, you are wearing your “graduate clinician hat”. It is hoped that by the end of your second practicum, you will be conducting evaluations, scoring evaluations, interpreting results, writing reports, developing appropriate goals based on results, and communicating the results and associated goals to parents and other team members. Your supervisor will be a key player in this process.

Your grade will largely reflect your supervisor’s final evaluation of your clinical skills submitted within CALIPSO at semester’s end. Note that the practicum course instructor has the discretion to adjust a student’s grade, when needed, to reflect persistent reports of unprofessionalism by the supervisor or NAU faculty/staff. The student will be notified before this type of grade adjustment is made. Also note that end-of-session paperwork needed for compliance with ASHA standards must also be received by the office before grades are issued.

In order to receive a letter grade for CSD 602 (i.e., not an “Incomplete”), the following is required at the end of each semester of Practicum:

1. Submit “supervisor feedback” within CALIPSO – this will not be released to your supervisor unless you specifically request submission;
2. Make sure that all clinical clockhours are submitted to and approved by your supervisor;
3. Review your final performance evaluation with your supervisor and make sure that they submit it (this will largely form the basis for your grade); and
4. Make sure that you have completed and emailed your new Registration Checklist and Information for Practicum/Externship forms to speech@nau.edu (also located on the CSD Forms page under 602/608 forms) so that you can register for the next semester.

A qualified “yes”. Externship placements in medical settings require approval by academic and clinical faculty.

This is a topic that will be covered in great depth during orientation. Your student advisor will work with you to secure an externship that is of interest to you and able to provide you with needed clinical experience.

Most students opt for online federal and state background checks. The College of Health and Human Services often uses www.verifiedcredentials.com but students have also successfully obtained background checks through www.criminalbackgroundrecords.com/ and HireRight.

The faculty will approve your Program of Study (POS), which is needed to apply for graduation.  Here are the procedural steps:

1. Student downloads and completes the Program of Study (including grades obtained to date)
2. Student scans and emails the completed POS to speech@nau.edu.
3. CSD Office obtains appropriate signatures and the POS is emailed back to the student.
4. Once the POS is uploaded to the Louie Student Center, the student will become eligible to apply for graduation within an hour. PDF instructions for uploading the POS are available.

NAU has two commencement ceremonies, in May and in December. Your Master of Science (MS) degree will not be posted until you have received a grade for your externship (CSD 608), typically at the end of the summer session, at which time you will officially graduate.  Make sure to complete the application to graduate, due by December 1 for a Spring/Summer graduation and May 1 for a Fall graduation. You may choose to ‘walk’ during the May commencement ceremony. Because of the size of the graduating class, four commencement ceremonies are held during graduation weekend; each hosting different colleges that make up the university. The CSD graduating class will attend the commencement ceremony with all the graduates from the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS), along with a few other colleges, such as the College of Education. This large ceremony is typically held in the NAU Walkup Skydome. In this ceremony, the president of the university will formally confer degrees. Your name will be called, you will walk up to the stage, receive a ‘diploma’ and shake the hands of university dignitaries and your CSD professors. There is no limit to the number of guests you can invite to this event. The ceremony is live-streamed online for those unable to physically attend the event. Note that your diploma will actually be mailed to you after your Program of Study is complete, sometime in August for most students.

If you are planning to participate in the NAU commencement, you will need to order and purchase your graduation regalia early in the Spring semester (regalia includes a minimum of cap/tassel, gown, and hood).

In addition to this official ceremony, the CSD department holds a smaller and more personal ‘CSD Celebration’, typically on the same day but in advance of the commencement ceremony. The program is planned by CSD faculty with input from graduating students. The ceremony is held on-campus for students only, although a zoom link is provided for interested family members. This event features faculty and student speakers, presentation of awards, a slide shows featuring student photos and other activities or events desired by students. A printed program will include your name and any awards you have received.