Our Alumni

Blue Hen educates her patients about auditory health

Natasha Gaston received her B.S. degree in cognitive science with a concentration in speech pathology and a minor in Spanish.

"During my Introduction to Audiology course, I really began to enjoy learning about the field of Audiology! After many observation and volunteer opportunities, I decided to pursue my education as a clinical audiologist. I recently earned my doctor of audiology degree from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. During my time at Bloomsburg, my clinical rotations included private practice, hospitals, and working alongside otolaryngologists. Additionally, I was fortunate to be trained in advanced vestibular diagnostics testing, as the program is one of few that offers rotational chair testing.

Currently, I work as a clinical audiologist for Hearing Services of Delaware. Fun fact, I was one of their first undergraduate students from the University of Delaware to observe at their practice! Our practice also contracts services with Bayhealth Medical Center in Dover, and Milford Delaware. I spend my time between the Bayhealth Medical Center in Dover, and our Newark office.

What I love about my career is that I truly am helping people improve their quality of life. As an audiologist my job goes beyond diagnosing hearing loss and vestibular disorders. My job is about educating patients about the importance of auditory health and the connections it has to other issues, such as memory and cognitive decline if left untreated. I also enjoy the diversity that audiology has to offer. My clinical skills are constantly being put to the test working in the fast-paced environment of a medical setting, while the evolution of hearing aid technology challenges me to make the best decision fitting patients with amplification. I have the pleasure of serving patients of all ages to hear better, and to make connections with loved ones!

My academic career at the University of Delaware was definitely the hardest but most rewarding time of my life. Delaware provided me with tough love and my time in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science definitely prepared me to become the audiologist I am today. As a McNair Scholar, I was able to conduct and present research on any topic of my choosing. I used this opportunity to learn more about Audiology on my own. My research titled "Racial/Ethnic and Socioeconomic Differences in Attitudes Toward Hearing Loss" gave me the opportunity to learn about what people from all backgrounds think about auditory health. Conducting research also gave me insight into how I can help advance the field as an audiologist. My success in graduate school, and in my new career as a clinical audiologist is due to the educational and professional foundation provided to me by professors and mentors at the University of Delaware. I am forever grateful for my time at UD!“As a peer advisor for the Psychology Department, I got incredibly valuable experience in public speaking, planning/coordinating, and in advising. In my current roles, I have to do a ton of all of those things. I would have been far less developed along these trajectories and less willing to take on these responsibilities had I not become comfortable with them at UD."

Globetrotting alumna earns Ph.D. in linguistics

Antje Stoehr graduated from the University of Delaware with her M.A. in linguistics and cognitive science in 2011. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics in 2018 at Radboud University Nijmegen and the International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences in the Netherlands.

"Unlike in the United States, an M.A. or M.Sc. degree is a prerequisite for starting a Ph.D. in the Netherlands. This is also why Ph.D. students can start with their own research projects right from the beginning. It usually takes four years to complete a Ph.D. in the Netherlands. During this period, several research projects must be carried out in order to fulfill all requirements for the academic degree.

For my dissertation, I investigated phonological development in monolingual and bilingual children. This means that besides typical tasks of a doctoral candidate like reading research articles, analyzing data and writing research articles, I spent a lot of time traveling through the Netherlands and Germany to collect data from preschool aged children. But there was of course even more to my job than research and this was also where my undergraduate background in management comes in handy: I wrote project plans; I managed a Ph.D. budget, which involves acquiring external grant money; I organized speaker series; I visited conferences to present my own research and in 2013 I even organized the International Child Phonology Conference together with my research group. I also taught the undergraduate level course “Phonetics and Phonology” – in my native language German –  in the Department of German Language and Culture.

As part of my Ph.D. work, I spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Language Science at the Pennsylvania State University to use and improve a skill that I learned at UD: Studying language acquisition using event-related potentials. In the final year of my Ph.D. contract, I prepared my research articles for publication. My dissertation consisted of four research papers, defended in a very traditional and formal Dutch ceremony. With an undergraduate degree from Germany, a master’s degree from the United States and a doctoral degree from the Netherlands, I’m curious where it will take me next."