The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Elizabeth Ocampo-Roman was the bridge between her parents and the language barrier while growing up in California.

When her family moved to Northwest Arkansas, Ocampo-Roman extended that advocacy to the Latino community at large. When she began studying at the University of Arkansas, she added hearing loss support to her list of top priorities.

Ocampo-Roman graduated in May with a master's degree in speech-language pathology. She's now a speech-language pathologist at Arkansas Children's Hospital Northwest.

She's grateful to her Communication Sciences and Disorders professors at the U of A who helped expand her knowledge in hearing loss and bilingualism.

"These resources and opportunities helped me grow as a clinician and a researcher inside and outside the classroom," she said.

While still an undergraduate, professor Rachel Glade introduced Ocampo-Roman to auditory-verbal therapy and her interest in the hearing loss population grew from there.

During hands-on rotations at local hospitals and clinics, Ocampo-Roman enjoyed problem solving. She created unique goals for children with hearing loss and their caregivers, providing auditory skills strategies they could implement at home.

That topic turned into her master's thesis, which she presented in May: "Development of the Caregiver-Child Auditory Skills Tracking (CAST) Scale: A Pilot Study on Caregiver Implementation via International Telepractice." She's now working on earning an Auditory-Verbal Therapy certification.

Ocampo-Roman also wrote a blog post with a member of her cohort, Erika Rodriguez, along with Glade, for an international Spanish hearing loss website on unilateral hearing loss titled, "Explicación de la pérdida auditiva unilateral."

While at the U of A, Elizabeth won an award reserved for graduate students who prove to be "Outstanding Clinicians." Ocampo-Roman's clinical supervisors called her outgoing, dependable, forward-thinking and passionate.

She's putting all those characteristics to good use in her new career at Children's Hospital.

"I plan to continue working on research to help families further understand the complexities of hearing loss and to provide professionals in the field resources to deliver the best care possible for this population," she said. "I look forward to continue providing services as a bilingual SLP."

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This story is the latest in a series called the Dean's Spotlight, featuring outstanding students in the College of Education and Health Professions. Visit COEHP's online magazine, Colleague, for more news from the six units that make up the College. Visit the Communication Sciences and Disorders page for more information on COEHP's speech-language pathology program.