Strategic Plan

Our department's strategic plan guides all aspects of our department, including our undergraduate, MA-SLP, AuD, and PhD programs. The strategic plan serves to protect and foster our core values. We are a community of teachers, scholars, and learners who endeavor to make the world better for individuals with communication disorders.  We achieve this through activities in three broad areas:

  1. Contributing to the research base through cutting-edge scholarship by world-renowned researchers partnering with students and members of the community
    • Members of our department conduct and disseminate cutting-edge studies of speech, language, and hearing abilities across the lifespan. 
    • This includes both basic research and applied scholarship in speech-language pathology and audiology.  Our work encompasses the full range of human behavior, from neural planning to real-world human behavior. 
    • We conduct work in our home discipline and in collaboration across different traditional disciplinary divides.
       
  2.  Maintaining academic excellence through creative, challenging, and intellectually stimulating teaching and learning
    • We offer 4 degrees: a BA in speech-language-hearing sciences, an MA in speech-language pathology, an AuD in audiology, and a PhD in speech-language-hearing sciences.
    • We foster intellectual growth in a variety of settings: classrooms, research laboratories, clinics, and in the community. 
    • The education that we provide prepares our students for top careers in educational and clinical service, academia, and industry.  Our focus on the full spectrum of human communication prepares students to work in a variety of fields.
       
  3. Engaging with communities outside the university and around the world
    • Our faculty, staff, and students are engaged with many different communities, including those on campus, in the Twin Cities, in greater Minnesota, and across the world.
    • Our faculty share their knowledge and skills through community partnerships and collaborative research in academia, in government, and in the private sector. 
    • Our students learn evidence-based, innovative skills in speech-language pathology and audiology in clinical sites around the entire country.
      • Hands-on learning occurs through extensive collaboration with schools, clinics, hospitals, and private practices locally, regionally, and nationally. 
      • Our community engagement activities help prepare students to be future leaders in clinical service delivery, research, and advocacy for our discipline.
View an executive summary of our department's strategic plan.