There is no minimum number of hours you need to ensure the student earns. At GVSU, our focus is on the experiences, rather than the attainment of hours. Our Clinical Coordinator and the students themselves monitor the number of hours accrued and ensure opportunities for meeting the required number of hours by graduation.

During the first semester of the program (Fall), each student completes a pediatric placement in a school or preschool setting and an adult placement in a long-term care setting. These first clinical experiences are precepted by GVSU faculty, who provide additional teaching about content. Students also complete coursework covering the following topics the first semester: speech sound disorders, aphasia, cognitive communication disorders, and dysphagia. The students also complete an interprofessional collaborative experience with Spectrum Health their first semester to help prepare them for their medical placements, and an experience with school-based personnel to help prepare them for their school-based placements during the first semester.

During the second semester, students are placed in the community three days weekly and these settings vary by student. They concurrently take coursework covering language disorders in infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school-aged children, and adolescents; fluency, voice, and laryngectomy. 

During the first part of the summer (third semester), students take courses in AAC, ASD, motor speech disorders, craniofacial disorders, research, and statistics. This completes their academic coursework. During the second part of the summer, they complete their clinical placements full-time.

The students' final semester is a full-time clinical placement. They have completed all coursework and have had 4 placements prior to this semester, in a variety of settings.

If you are having difficulty with one of our students, we recommend first discussing this with the student, as we endeavor to facilitate their ability to listen to constructive feedback and make improvements to their performance based on this feedback. If you need further assistance, please reach out to your student's clinical affiliate. Our clinical affiliates are faculty members who provide further instruction and resources to the student to facilitate success in the clinical placements; assignments to evaluate the students' mastery of the clinical competencies, and act as a liaison between the preceptor and student as needed. If necessary, the Clinical Coordinator and/or Program Director can meet with the student as well.

If there is knowledge you had expected the student to have and they have arrived at your site without it, please let the clinical affiliate know. This communication between our community partners and our program faculty helps to shape the content of early clinical experiences and academic courses. If you have resources that can help the student attain this knowledge, it is helpful to provide them to the student or let the student know where to find the information. It is worth noting, however, that our program prepares our students for the knowledge and skills that they will need as SLPs in general. Site-specific policies, procedures, terminology, or equipment will likely be new to the student, but our students are eager to learn about how things work in your setting