Name: Julie Gamradt
Age: 46
Job: Outreach program manager/augmentative and alternative communication specialist at the Communication Aids and Systems Clinic (CASC) and Communication Development Program (CDP) at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
I became interested in speech-language pathology (SLP), or what’s also called “communicative disorders,” during college when my roommate was enrolled in SLP classes. I got my first real job as an SLP in a small school district in northern Minnesota. The principal of my school informed me that most of the children who would be on my caseload had severe disabilities and limited functional speaking skills. Oddly enough, in my training as an SLP, the issue of helping people who couldn’t communicate using speech barely came up – of course, this was over 25 years ago, and it’s different now. In a panic, I went to the library and found one book on adaptations for people who were “nonspeaking.”