Deep in the BYU Taylor Building, in a windowless room strewn with stuffed animals and toys, a small girl with dark hair pulled back in a fluffy green scrunchie is playing a game with BYU students Olivia Shepherd, ’25, and Brynlee Bulloch, ’25.
Based on the giggles and high fives, this could almost be a playdate. But there are signs that something more is afoot. Minutes earlier, the child was hesitant to engage with Shepherd and Bulloch at all, constantly looking to her mother, who watches intently nearby. The students try a game with a flip book and then with some farm figurines before moving to play on the floor. Across the room, assistant teaching professor Tracy Liu looks on, silent, but with a slight smile on her face. Eventually, the students end the game, leave the room with Liu, and have a conversation.
The conversation is full of praise for the girl. The students note her intelligence, expressive personality, and desire to please. They also notice that while she seemed to understand everything said to her, she didn’t have a large vocabulary to answer back. Then there’s a more involved discussion of her specific situation and behaviors.
“Given that, what would you recommend?” Liu asks Shepherd and Bulloch. Soon, the students and Liu return to the mother and child, delivering encouragement, advice, a few recommendations, and plans for following up. As the mother leaves with her little girl, she looks relieved, maybe even empowered. Bulloch and Shepherd do too.
That empowerment—both for community members who need help and for the students who give it—is the impetus behind the free undergraduate screening clinic started in 2024. On four Fridays each semester, eight communication disorders students perform speech and hearing screenings on young clients while being observed and mentored by Liu, a speech language pathologist (SLP), and Katie Stone, an audiologist.
“It’s very rare for undergraduates to get hands-on clinical experience,” Stone said. “It just doesn’t happen. But these students are seeing real clients with real problems. They’re talking to real parents who have real concerns about their children, and they’re being mentored very closely by a professional audiologist and a professional SLP.
“It’s a very unique opportunity that usually doesn’t come until much later, and it’s just so fun because that’s where the learning usually happens.”
During the screenings, students use various diagnostic tools and methods and interpret the results, Stone said, all while building rapport with clients. “You can learn all you want out of a book,
and then, the minute you’re with a real person, everything changes.”
That kind of opportunity interested Bulloch, who was inspired to pursue a career in communication disorders through a young girl from her home ward, whose life was improved by speech therapists and audiologists.
“There’s not very much you can do with an undergraduate degree as far as seeing clients,” she said. “It was super exciting that I could actually work face-to-face with people.”
Shepherd agreed, saying the undergraduate major in communication disorders establishes “foundational principles” while graduate school is more “hands-on.” One benefit of the screenings is increased understanding of the nuances in each person’s situation, she added.
“We have access to information about why they’re here, and a lot of them looked similar on paper,” Shepherd said. “But then every experience was so different, and it was just super fun to really see and understand that they all have very individual needs.”
During their training, Bulloch said, their advisors Stone and Liu emphasized that although the student screeners are undergraduates, clients will consider them experts—and it’s important to earn that trust.
“You’ve got to be open, listen to them, and let them express their struggles and their thoughts,” Bulloch said. “You’re making them feel comfortable and making a relationship with them rather than just treating them like patients.”
Students apply each semester to be a part of the screening clinic. Once chosen, the eight students selected receive two days of training before spending four Fridays throughout the semester performing screenings. There’s also a final wrap-up day to help them assess their experiences.
Any parent can sign up for a screening for their child at the undergraduate clinic. If screeners see a need for further interventions, the next steps can vary—from finding community resources and help to becoming longer-term clients for services provided by faculty and graduate students in the Department of Communication Disorders.
“They’re actually seeing clients all day on those Fridays,” Stone said. “That’s a great sort of preview of what it’s going to be like. I don’t know an SLP or an audiologist who’s not busy. They’re so busy, and if they’re in schools, it can be overwhelming.”
Both Liu and Stone said the students struggle at times: knowing how to engage clients,
understanding how best to assess them, and making the key insights that will help pinpoint what’s next for each person.
“We’re not going to throw them to the wolves; we’ll step in as needed,” Stone said. “But we want them to be stretched a little bit, because when they are stretched, that’s where real growth happens.
“I told them, ‘If you’re stuck, give me the look.’ If I don’t get the look, I’m going to just sit and observe, and then if something needs to be fixed or expounded on or whatever, I’m right there to jump in.”
In the end, Bulloch said, her challenges during the screening clinic were among her best learning experiences as an undergraduate.
“It made me realize that I know more than I think,” she said. “Not that I didn’t believe in myself going into it, but I was nervous about pulling the information out of my head. But I could do it. I did do it.”
Shepherd agreed. “It definitely helped with my confidence. And from a spiritual perspective, you do all that you can do and all that you can to prepare, and then you’re going to be directed the way God wants you to be directed. You definitely need to put in the preparation, you need to study, you need to learn the material, and you need to do the training. But then, in the situation, if you’re living your life seeking it out, the Spirit can be with you. You’re going to be able to adjust.”
Liu said the experience has profoundly influenced the students, who write reflections following every screening day as well as a wrap-up at the end of the semester discussing how the experience was “(1) spiritually strengthening, (2) intellectually enlarging, and (3) character building, leading to (4) lifelong learning and service” (The Aims of a BYU Education [1 March 1995]).
“It’s so gratifying to read their experiences,” she said. “They’re amazing.”
For example, one student wrote that working at the screening clinic “gave me a sense of purpose and was really fulfilling, knowing I was helping these kids get to the bottom of their
communication struggles—a key element in helping them reach their full potential."
Another student wrote that her service at the clinic helped her “see the love that God has for each of His children and how our bodies were created so perfectly in such detail. I was able to witness the divine potential that all of us have, and their unique experiences and circumstances showed me their resilience and were very humbling. . . . It gave me the chance to serve others with the same love and care that He offers us.”
Stone said she has loved seeing students “making a real difference with the skills they have now.”
“It’s just such a wonderful experience for us [faculty] too. We see these students interacting with real people, real sons and daughters of Heavenly Father who need help. We see the growth they experience!” she said. “It’s just been wonderful. I’m loving it.”