Communication Sciences and Disorders’ new home serves BU students — and Waco

Last year, Baylor received an incredible — and anonymous — $10 million gift to transform the Department of Communications Sciences and Disorders (CSD). Part of that gift allowed CSD to move into a new home, leaving Neill Morris Hall for a newly renovated Cashion Academic Center — and what a beautiful new home it is!

Approximately 18,000 square feet on the building’s first floor now provides space for clinical work, while classroom and labs are on another floor. Faculty offices are located in the adjoining Hankamer Academic Building, making it easier for professors, staff members and students to collaborate. But what CSD students and professors seem most excited about is not how what state-of-the-art facility can do for them, but how it’s helping them better serve the community — as professors, students, and the parents of local children explain in this video:

CSD’s new home gives students the space they need to help both children and adults who suffer from strokes, autism and speaking disorders of all kinds. And with more space than ever before, it allows for more faculty, more research opportunities, and a more robust graduate program.

“With my clients now, I can see that their faces and their excitement has changed since they’ve come in,” says Kacie Evans, a CSD graduate student. “I can see that their faces are so exited to see a whole bunch of new things that they get to try out. And we’re gonna get to work with them to expand their language or their articulation or anything that we’re working on with them. They get to explore that in a bigger setting and a bigger place that they’re even more excited to be at than when they were previously here.”

Duke Nelson, whose young daughter receives help from CSD students, is one of those clients. “It feels great,” he says. “A lot of sleepless nights and a lot of worry about, ‘Will she be able to grow up functioning as a regular adult? Will she be able to provide for herself? Will she be able to be happy as she grow up?’ I never really realized how much language plays a role in our overall happiness and being able to function in the world. And frankly, having this resource in the community has been phenomenal. I don’t know what we would have done without it.”

Sic ’em, Baylor CSD!