It was just a year ago that West Liberty University opened a Speech and Hearing Clinic that provides health care services to the public at a reasonable cost. Now WLU’s College of Sciences is expanding its clinical space to offer even more community outreach.
The expansion means the vacant fourth floor of Campbell Hall of Health Sciences will be renovated and furnished to house two new clinical spaces for the growing health sciences programs.
Both a Behavioral Health Clinic and a larger Speech and Hearing Clinic will be housed in the renovated area.
“This is great news for our region and for our students interested in health care professions. The Campbell Hall building and renovation work starts in April and should be complete by August 2020,” said President Stephen Greiner.
WLU is working with the same Pittsburgh architectural firm (PWWG) that built Campbell Hall, which opened in 2014. The current expansion will finish about a third of the space available on the fourth floor.
“We anticipate putting the project out to bid in mid-February,” Greiner noted.
“The clinics will provide diagnostic and treatment rooms for patients, allowing students and faculty to be directly involved in patient care. This type of experiential learning experience is invaluable for students, as it promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills,” said Dr. Karen Kettler, dean of the College of Sciences.
One of the spaces is intended for an all-new psychology lab to support the recent addition of the master of arts in clinical psychology degree program, which began in the fall of 2019.
“We‘re very excited to gain our own clinical space in the near future,” said Dr. Jessica Collins, professor and director of the planned behavior health clinic.
Psychology master degree students, overseen by clinical psychologists, will treat the behavioral health patients that visit the clinic.
The other new clinical space will be used for the expansion of WLU’s Speech and Hearing Clinic.
“We began to offer the Speech and Hearing clinical services last spring to meet a community need and provide our students with more patient experience, right here on campus. Now we want to expand the space so that we can add speech and language services,” said Dr. Stephanie Bradley, Speech Pathology and Audiology Program director.
At this time, clinical services offered include otoscopy, hearing evaluations and tympanometry.
“The future services will include speech and language pathology diagnostic and treatment options for patients of all ages,” noted Kettler. WLU’s Speech and Hearing undergraduate degree program has been educating students since 1975.
For more information on the clinics, call at 304-336-8108 or visit westliberty.edu/college-of-sciences.
