As an admissions committee member for the graduate program and coordinator of the undergraduate program in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA, I read the personal statements written by those seeking admission to our department. Many cite experiences and exposure to the field spawned by early personal encounters with individuals who had a communication disorder.

They may have accompanied a sibling to weekly speech therapy sessions and watched the clinical interactions, helped a grandparent following a stroke, or assisted classmates with communication impairments who were included in their regular education classrooms. The majority of personal statements and essays that accompany these applications refer to profound and transformative experiences early in life that sparked interest in the field and led to a desire to pursue advanced study.

Most people encounter the professions of medicine, law, teaching and dentistry within the routines of their daily life. However, young people may not have an obvious pathway or opportunity to learn about the professions of speech-language pathology and audiology.

The Northeastern University Student Speech-Language-Hearing Association (NUSSLHA) initiated the High School Outreach Program to take advantage of recent career exploration programs included in secondary school programs to expose high school students to our field at a point in their lives when they are making decisions about college entry and fields of study. As an urban university, Northeastern provides an ideal setting in which to offer this type of program and an ideal partner. The Health Careers Academy (HCa) is an innovative charter school in our neighborhood whose mission is to prepare urban youth for success in college and careers in the health sciences. HCa has an existing partnership with the Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern. Our program was an expansion of this existing relationship. Funding for the program was provided by a Student Engagement Grant from the Student Outreach Office at the university, with a matching grant from the dean's office in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

Dori Herskovitz and Caryn Graboski, co-presidents of NUSSLHA, met with HCa administrators to recruit interested high school students and led the six-week program on campus every Wednesday afternoon. To capture the interest of the students, ages 16-18, we drew on our own experiences to identify the triggers that drew us to the field. They were similar to the experiences written about in the personal statements of our applicant pool.

Using this information to shape our six-module curriculum, we attempted to help our recruits make personal connections in their own lives and communities to better understand the impact of a communication disorder on personal, academic and vocational functioning. The curriculum had three major goals:

• to expose high school students to basic academic knowledge/subject content pertaining to normal and disordered communication;

• to provide participants with a clinical component in their exploration as they partnered with graduate students to review treatment plans, develop materials, and review clinical documentation involved in weekly sessions; and

• to provide participants with an opportunity to learn about the range of populations that speech-language pathologists and audiologists work with, as well as information about employment sites.

We addressed the academic content component by using student-friendly, linguistically accessible readings taken from popular literature and media that talked about or featured a main character with a communication impairment. We guided the students to make connections with the characters by sharing personal experiences.

For example, segments from the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ?(Vintage, 2007) were read aloud. Through guided questions and discussions, students were able to relate the experience of the character and his family members to similar experiences with relatives following the onset of dementia and/or other cardiovascular events. We also showed some scenes from the movie. Embedded in the readings and movie viewing was information about neuroanatomy and the consequences of brain injury. It was presented at a time when students could relate and connect the information to overt communication behaviors depicted and experienced by the characters.

Other curriculum modules featured stuttering, autism, developmental delay and language impairment in the school-aged population. Across all classes and disorders, students were guided to look at the impact of a communication disorder on the individual, family and community.

Readings from popular literature were used to present the information in a format and at a level to which high school students could relate. Segments from Al Capone Does My Shirts (Penguin Group, 2004), by Gennifer Choldenko, brought to life the financial, emotional, educational and vocational impact of having a family member with a handicap.

The curriculum was expanded this spring to include other areas within the scope of practice for speech-language pathology. NUSSLHA officers Julie Morris and Katherine Finnerty led the program. The Trumpet of the Swan (Harpercollins, 1970), E.B. White's children's book, was presented to initiate discussion of the use of assistive technology and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The novel deals with the emotional and social impact of being unable to communicate as it documents the main character's effort to "find voice" through the use of AAC.

The role of the speech-language pathologist in treating people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) was explored by reading portions of The Ha Ha (Little, Brown and Company, 2005), by Dave King, which chronicles the life experiences of a young soldier who returns from service in Vietnam following a TBI that resulted in loss of speech and language.

The program also included a segment on college exploration. The program leaders worked with students to identify post-secondary schools that offer majors in speech-language pathology and audiology. Because all of the students have diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, particular attention was devoted to exposing them to programs with a minority/bilingual emphasis.

Ruth Margulies-Hochman is on faculty at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. She can be contacted at R.Margulies@neu.edu.