Aprendamos donates to NMSU Communication Disorders Department

NMSU’s Communication Disorders Program receives critical funding from local organizations

Date: 05/21/2018
Writer: Melissa R. Rutter, 575-646-4211, mrrutter@nmsu.edu
Read this article on the NMSU website here.

New Mexico State University College of Education’s Communication Disorders Program received a contribution of $10,000 from the Aprendamos Intervention Team and Direct Therapies Center. A check presentation was held May 1 outside of the Communication Science building.

This is the latest contribution the Communication Disorders program has received from the organizations and plans have already been made about where the money will be used to continue to improve the program.

“Running the Communication Disorders program is a fairly expensive enterprise because we have a clinical training component. So, for our students to be able to see clients here in the Garrett Speech and Hearing Center, we need a lot of resources to support them and to give them a state-of-the-art training program,” said Heike Lehnert-LeHouillier, program director of NMSU’s Communication Disorders. “We plan to use some of the funds to pay for SimuCase, which is an online program that has simulated clients so that our students can practice case studies. Additionally, we’re also going to use the funds for ClinicNote, which is an electronic documentation system especially for clinical training.”

Genevieve Muñoz, coordinator of Clinical Education at NMSU, said it is an honor to be working with community partners as their investments will help students to be better prepared when they head out into the real world through improved clinical training opportunities.

“The programs we will purchase with this generous support will help our students become more acclimated in electronic medical records so that when they practice in the community they are familiar with best practices in patient documentation and ultimately improve patient outcomes,” said Muñoz.

Abel Covarrubias, Chief Executive Officer of the Aprendamos Intervention Team, said his organization and Direct Therapies Center came together to start a special fund to allocate dollars to give back to the department they share a close connection with.

“It’s a great partnership that we have developed with the Communication Disorders Department in the College of Education and we look forward to many years of success and supporting our future speech language pathologists,” said Covarrubias.