Alicia Swain Spotlight

Alicia Swain credits Dr. Chao-Yang Lee, CSD's undergraduate education coordinator and director of studies for the Honors Tutorial College, with guiding her to numerous opportunities. Dr. Lee served as advisor on a research project on acoustics and pronunciation that earned Swain a CHSP Student Funding Research Grant and a 2015 Dean's Recognition Award for Research.

Alicia Swain: uncharted paths to success

Like Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," Alicia Swain's academic career came to a point where "two roads diverged in a yellow wood." For Alicia, the road not taken was the University of Akron, where she was accepted to study accounting. After Alicia's father suffered a stroke, she chose instead to attend Ohio University-Zanesville-a little closer to home-so she could help her family.

Accompanying her father to therapy kindled Alicia's interest in speech and communication disorders, but it was Willa Marie Jackson, Alicia's academic adviser at OU-Z, who actually steered her toward her current major.

"I saw how much the therapists helped my dad, and I really wanted to become involved in that. So I mentioned it to my adviser and she said, 'You know, they have a program at the Athens campus.'"

The transfer was seamless.

"All my transcripts read 'Ohio University,'' Alicia noted, "which is so convenient when you are applying to grad schools because you only have to submit one transcript." Alicia had already taken online speech science and language development classes while at OU-Z before transferring to the Athens campus.

"I just fell in love with speech science. But when I got to the Athens campus, I realized that you really can't do [what I was hoping to do] with an undergraduate degree. So I got involved with OPIE's Speech Processing Lab, with the Study Abroad, and with TOEFL (Teaching English as a Second Language)."

Alicia's first study abroad experience took her to Costa Rica, where she studied public health. This past year, she signed up for Ecuador, where she completed a five-week intensive TOEFL certification program. All of these experiences culminated recently in Alicia's selection for a 2015-16 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Award to Turkey-the first OHIO Fulbright student to visit that country-where next year she will teach English as a second language.

After completing her Fulbright commitment in Turkey, Swain, who graduates this spring with a B.S. in communication sciences and disorders and a B.A. in psychology, will return to OHIO to complete the graduate program in speech language pathology. After that, she said, "I honestly don't know what I will do. I love traveling, but then again I love Ohio. But things can always change-like they changed for me when I went from accounting to speech sciences."

And that openness to change, as Frost wrote, "has made all the difference."