Cultural competence in the field of communication sciences & disorders (CSD) is an essential topic, especially when so many CSD professionals in the United States continue to be white and female. How can clinicians navigate an increasingly diverse client base if they lack key cultural perspectives and awareness? And how can clients who identify as racial and/or ethnic minorities be expected to connect with SLPs and AuDs who simply don’t understand their lived experiences? What does this all mean for quality of care not just in the field of CSD, but the US healthcare system at large?

In this episode, Emily & Aidan chat with second year SLP student Katie Nguyen about her experience in grad school as a BIPOC individual, unpack the complicated barriers that face many minority student clinicians, and outline her biggest hopes for the future of cultural diversity in CSD.

A HUGE thank you to listener Madelyn for submitting today’s LingQuery!

Do YOU have a burning question about the language & communication sciences that you’d like to see featured on the show? Record your own audio “LingQuery” and DM it to @lingquery_pod on IG.

Hello, hello! Welcome to LingQuery, the show that asks - and attempts to answer - questions related to the language and communication sciences. Every episode, we respond in tandem with guests from a wide variety of disciplines to an audience-submitted question or “LingQuery”, all about human communication and its array of interrelated systems and modalities. Uncovering fascinating insights and perspectives you won’t hear anywhere else, this series explores the nature of phenomena such as speech, language, and cognition from the perspectives of biology, psychology, anthropology, art, and more. LingQuery, listen wherever you get your pods.

Produced by LittleFire.

Directed & edited by Raz Cunningham

Co-written & co-hosted by Aidan Laliberte & Emily Tuohey