Helping others find their voice: The impact of speech-language pathology
Helping others find their voice: The impact of speech-language pathology
When Angie Glynn reflects on her career as a speech-language pathologist, it’s hard for her to describe just how much the University of Northern Iowa helped her get to where she is today.
“UNI gave me the foundation of everything I've learned about my profession,” she said. “The support it provided with our clinical experiences, the feedback, the life skills it taught me with responsibility, organization and time management all helped me grow.”
Throughout her 20-year career, Glynn has done a little bit of everything, helping both children and adults in Iowa and Texas.
“When my kids ask what I do for work, I explain that I help other kids with their speech and language skills or adults who have communication issues following a stroke or a brain injury,” she said. “I also help older adults with cognitive issues in the home.”
Not only does Glynn love how her job allows her to help others, but she also enjoys the flexibility of working as needed while prioritizing her family. It was one of the things that attracted her to the career in the first place as a freshman at a private Iowa college before she chose to transfer to UNI.
“I talked with a family friend who was a speech therapist, and she shared how she works with both kids and adults and talked about the different settings you could work in and the flexibility with the career,” she said. “It just really piqued my interest. So I had looked into two great bachelor’s programs, but ultimately wanted to be closer to home, so I chose UNI.”
As an undergraduate student at UNI, Glynn worked with real clients in the Roy Eblen Speech & Hearing Clinic.
“I still remember one of the first kiddos I worked with at the clinic, as well as his family and the connection we made,” she said. “There was a two-way window, and so you could be working with the client, and your supervisor would be on the other side of the window. They’d give you feedback. I got to learn on my feet, bring in games and toys — things that worked or things I thought would work — and then roll with it if that wasn't working. It was my first taste of what actual treatment looks like.”
Glynn loved UNI so much and the experience it gave her that she stayed to earn her Master of Arts in Speech-Language Pathology.
After getting her first experience as a young professional in Iowa, she and her husband moved to Texas. It was there, with only about five years of professional experience, that she was asked to help treat then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was beginning a long recovery after surviving an attempted assassination that left her with a traumatic brain injury.
When Giffords first came to Glynn, she was awake and aware, but unable to communicate or swallow. “It was really, really challenging starting from square one to get her to do simple things. We had no idea what her outcome was going to be or how far we were going to be able to rehabilitate before she left us.”
Thanks to the treatment of Glynn and many other medical professionals, Giffords was able to recover much of these abilities. Although Glynn only worked with her as a client for five months, Giffords made a lasting impact.
“There are just some patients that are a dream to work with, and Gabby was one of them,” she said. “She is one of the most inspiring, hardworking, inspirational people I've ever met. I’ve said this 100 times: I truly feel like I probably learned more from her in that whole rehab process than she even learned from me. She just taught me a lot about perseverance and courage and just really sticking with things and putting the time in.”
While working with Giffords remains a career highlight, Glynn continues to experience the joy of clients getting their “aha” moments each day. Right now she is working with a client who has Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and is losing her ability to speak, but is learning how to communicate through a device that allows to make calls, text, access Facebook and listen to music with her eye gaze.
“Knowing I'm giving her a way to communicate and giving her some quality of life at the end of her life brings me a ton of joy.”
