Professor Lauren Calandruccio (at the top) with some students in the IMPACT program. From left: Jocelyn Martinez, Amber See, Aja Leatherwood, Sofia Hall, Jorge Amadeo-Muniz, Serena Wheeler and Ava Ng. | Photo by Roger Mastroianni
After arriving at Case Western Reserve University as an undergraduate, Aniya Martinez was struggling to find her people—and her purpose.
A first-generation college student and a woman of color, Martinez (CWR ’21) felt alone as she navigated personal challenges, juggled jobs to make ends meet and sometimes muddled through her coursework.
“I was going through undergrad in a daze, just taking random classes and hoping something caught my interest,” she said.
It wasn’t until her sophomore year, when she took a class on the speech sounds of language, that Martinez began to flourish. The material was exciting, as was the prospect of working in a “helping profession” like speech-language pathology that would enable Martinez to support families in the same way healthcare providers had assisted hers.
Her mother, Rosa, had emigrated from the Dominican Republic alone at age 16 and, Martinez said, was in and out of homeless shelters for years. Rosa often told her daughter that if it wasn’t for her support system of professionals, she wouldn’t have made it.
“They put their arms under hers and lifted her up,” Martinez said. “I realized that helping people like my mom is where my heart is at.”
But to get there, Martinez needed more support to lift her up—which she found in an inventive, holistic mentoring program co-created at the College of Arts and Sciences.
Innovative Mentoring through Professional Advancement and Cultural Training (IMPACT) began with a little seed money and a big idea to provide mentorship opportunities for communication sciences students from diverse backgrounds.
The program received important validation and funding with a five-year, $1.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2023—five years after a troubling conversation
that helped spur its creation. Lauren Calandruccio, PhD, a CWRU professor and trained audiologist, had spoken with a former student who is Black and was called a racial slur by a patient.
Thinking the best guidance would come from someone who is also Black, Calandruccio, who is white, reached out to her longtime friend, audiologist Jessica Sullivan, PhD, chair of communicative sciences and disorders at Hampton University in Virginia. The two knew what that alumna experienced wasn’t unique and brainstormed ways to better support students from historically underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in careers in audiology and speech-language pathology.
“We wanted to provide a space for our CWRU students where they felt a sense of belonging and had an opportunity to build an identity within our field,” said Calandruccio, the Louis D. Beaumont University Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences. “Further, Jessica’s students weren’t getting the kind of research opportunities they needed to build up their resumes and make them more competitive for graduate school.”
Hampton’s communicative sciences and disorders department is small but has a rich legacy as the oldest such program at an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Calandruccio said. And the university—like all HBCUs, Sullivan said—doesn’t offer a doctoral program in audiology.
The two professors decided they could double their impact by giving undergraduate and graduate students the best of both institutions—and each other. With that, IMPACT began to take shape.
They envisioned ongoing professional development, experiential learning and mentoring opportunities and the creation of a pipeline to graduate school. IMPACT also aimed to create a sense of belonging for diverse students in the field of communication sciences and disorders, which, for example, in 2022 was overwhelmingly white and female, according to data from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
“I never had a professor in my field or a mentor that looked like me,” said Sullivan, who said she was one of only approximately 250 Black audiologists nationally when she met Calandruccio around 2006. “Even today, there’s less than 80 audiology programs in the country, and seldom will you see more than two diverse students in a cohort and often you will not see any.”
“There aren’t many bilingual speech-language pathologists in the U.S., but there are so many kids growing up bilingual like I did. IMPACT has taught me that I’m the future of the field.” —Jocelyn Martinez, a CWRU junior
The two submitted their first IMPACT grant proposal to ASHA in early 2020. Months later, the murder of George Floyd sparked a racial reckoning across the country that inspired individuals and institutions alike to grapple with issues of equity and social justice. IMPACT’s focus on diversity and inclusion was met with enthusiasm by ASHA, which provided an $11,000 grant to fund the program for a year.
“Our first year was a smashing success, in part because no one had anything else to do during the pandemic,” said Calandruccio, who laughed at the memory and is affectionately called “Dr. Cal” by her students.
The inaugural IMPACT cohort included 10 students from both universities—among them, Martinez, then a rising senior weighing her post- graduation options.
“Dr. Cal was like, ‘What about grad school?’ My parents didn’t finish high school and I don’t think one person in my family thought about undergrad, even if they did finish high school. But she said I was capable of doing more. No one’s ever said they believed in me going that far. It motivated me,” said Martinez, who is graduating with her master’s from Hampton this spring and has accepted a job as a speech-language pathologist.
By May 2021, Calandruccio and Sullivan knew they had a successful program on their hands—but no funding to continue it. A $25,000 gift from the Houston-based LaCalle Group allowed the program to expand the breadth and depth of its supports.
LaCalle is the parent company of several online learning platforms, including Simucase, which provides simulation learning and began at CWRU.
Hampton University Professor Jessica Sullivan (right) with Aniya Martinez (CWR ‘21), who is earning a master’s degree at Hampton this spring. Martinez is part of a joint CWRU- Hampton program mentoring students in the field of communication sciences and disorders. | Photo courtesy of Hampton University
“Partnering with IMPACT is a way we can help students from underrepresented groups meet their academic and professional aspirations,” said LaCalle Group CEO Stacy Williams, PhD, an adjunct associate professor in CWRU’s Department of Psychological Sciences. Supporting these students in speech-language pathology “directly contributes to the diversification of the field, which is crucial for providing culturally competent and inclusive care.”
The additional funding enabled Calandruccio and Sullivan to continue IMPACT after the original grant ended.
More recently, the $1.25 million NIH grant provided funding to reach the next level. Among other things, it allows the two professors to offer stipends to undergraduates who complete 150 experience hours across two semesters and graduate students who complete 50 hours.
Easing the financial burden for students gives them time to invest in themselves, said Martinez, who has a full-time externship at Eastern State Hospital, in Williamsburg, Virginia, working with psychiatric patients with swallowing problems and communication disorders. “I’m able to work on a resume or fix a paper,” she said. “I can focus on school” without worrying about paying rent or buying food.
Students can earn their experience hours by participating in IMPACT’s cultural empathy book club or attending events like the speed-dating-inspired IMPACT Lab-a-Palooza. With that event, three scientists from other research-intensive universities or leading research institutes give a five-minute talk on their work, then host breakout sessions for those who want to learn more.
Students also earn credit for completing LinkedIn Learning courses and meeting with their affinity, research and academic mentors—clinicians, scientists, and professors from across the country—and journaling about those discussions to hone their writing skills.
Case Western Reserve junior Jocelyn Martinez, a first-generation college student from suburban Chicago, said her mentors have helped her develop confidence and leadership skills.
“They made me realize that I belong,” said Martinez, who is not related to Aniya. “There aren’t many bilingual speech-language pathologists in the U.S., but there are so many kids growing up bilingual like I did. IMPACT has taught me that I’m the future of the field.”
IMPACT also offers opportunities for CWRU students like senior Amber See to attend—and even present at— conferences. See, who has participated in IMPACT for the past three years, gave a presentation on her summer- research experience during the ASHA Convention last November in Boston. Among the audience members was See’s affinity mentor from the New York City area, whom she had only met over Zoom. “It can be kind of intimidating to stand up in front of an audience and talk for an hour, so it meant a lot to have him there cheering me on,” said See, from suburban Cleveland. “IMPACT has given me a whole community of people to lean on.”
That community of support only continues to grow, with 21 students enrolled in IMPACT during the 2023–24 academic year: nine undergraduates and two graduate students at CWRU and six undergrads and four graduate students at Hampton.
Four years in, IMPACT is preparing more students from historically underrepresented backgrounds for success in graduate programs. Of the 10 alumni from CWRU, three are now speech-language pathologists and seven have matriculated to speech-language pathology programs at New York University, Columbia University and Hampton, among other institutions. Of the eight Hampton graduates who completed the IMPACT program, four enrolled in audiology doctoral programs, while the others enrolled in speech-language pathology programs, two of them at CWRU.
The NIH grant will ensure the program continues to grow and thrive for at least four more years—and perhaps expand to other disciplines and institutions. Anything beyond that will require more funding.
“If you look at our grant proposal, the first page is all communication sciences, but the rest of it is just good mentoring practices,” said Calandruccio, who, in September, was named CWRU’s Innovator of the Year: Education.
She hopes universities—including those wanting to partner with a minority student-serving institution like an HBCU—will consider a program like IMPACT. And by the end of the NIH grant, the goal is to have the curriculum widely available on the Canvas learning- management system. “We have done significant work so that others will have the time to implement a rigorous mentoring program without having to start from scratch,” Calandruccio said.
Even with a template, however, Calandruccio knows the work will always be hard, “but we can make it easier for people who want to make and see change” for people like Aniya Martinez and other current and future IMPACT students.
“Dr. Cal opened my eyes to what’s possible,” Aniya Martinez said. “Working with her and IMPACT has shown me that I’m able, I’m worth it, and I’m always going to have people around me that believe that too.”
“IMPACT has given me a whole community of people to lean on.” —Amber See, a CWRU senior