SHAV Conference 2018

SHAV was a wonderful experience. I had the opportunity to go many different presentations to further my education in Communication Sciences and Disorders. The presentations that were of interest to me included Social Pragmatics Communication Disorders: Best Practices for Intervention, Supporting Students with Communication Deficits in Social Participation, Social Language Skills Training Within School-Based Curriculum, Getting Started in Telepractice for the SLP and Intensity of Treatment in Aphasia: More Than One Definition.  In addition to going to these presentations, I had the opportunity to present a poster with my group on whether speaking fundamental frequency influences ratings of speaker competence and social attractiveness. Although we did not place in the poster competition, it was a wonderful experience being able to present our research to professionals and being able to look at other graduate programs research posters. It was interesting to look at the different interests regarding research topics between the graduate programs. Overall, I feel like I have furthered my education in many areas because of the SHAV conference. I am not from Virginia, but I hope that my home state has a similar type of conference so that I can further my knowledge in Speech Language Pathology. This is a field that is always changing. It is important that SLPs go to these conferences to stay in tune with current information in all the areas of Speech Language Pathology.