The Communication Disorders Clinic participates in collaborative outreach affiliations designed to benefit both the community and UCF graduate students in communication sciences and disorders. Graduate students who participate in these activities are supervised on-site by UCF clinical educators.
Brain Fitness Club
The Brain Fitness Club is an innovative program designed to serve persons in Central Florida who are experiencing early memory loss. The members of the club recognize their memory impairment and want to engage in health promoting activities. The goal of this program is to provide a therapeutic environment in which persons experiencing early memory impairment can participate in a variety of brain healthy activities.
The program functions in collaboration with the UCF School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Each semester, graduate students, supervised by a clinical instructor, attend the sessions and provide one-on-one mental stimulation. Services include an assessment of cognitive-communicative abilities along with recommendations for strength-based programming in the areas of speech and cognition. Each participant in the program is given the opportunity to work weekly with a graduate clinician on activities mutually decided by the participant and student to be mentally challenging. These activities may include pencil/paper tasks, computer challenges or book readings.
Preschool Screenings
Graduate students, accompanied by a clinical educator, provide speech, language and hearing screenings to many of the preschools in a tri-county area around Orlando. Children are referred for the screening through parent permission and/or teacher concerns and requests. The children are tested using the Preschool Language Scale-5 screening tool. Each child’s parents and the preschool teacher and director are given copies of the results as well as suggestions for how to monitor the child’s communication and hearing skills. Parents and preschool directors are also given a list of facilities in the area for further testing and therapy if warranted.
