For our second installment of the Faculty in Focus series, we chatted with Dr. Nydia Bou, the Senior Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence and Communication Disorders Chair. Throughout her career, Dr. Bou has had experience in teaching both undergraduate and graduate students, program development, grant writing, administration, and assessment. She has been at Emerson College for over 5 years, and her field area of interest within Speech-Language Pathology includes Spanish phonetics and phonology, speech perception, and speech production analysis.
Many of Dr. Bou’s students may know that she was born and raised in Puerto Rico, is fluent in both English and Spanish, and, impressively, is one of 25 Puerto Rican women to become a World Major Marathons Finisher. But do they know her Starbucks order? Or what profession she would have chosen if she didn’t fall in love with Speech-Language Pathology? Read on to find out!
If you could design a class that doesn’t currently exist, what would it be?
So many ideas come to mind! These are some of them:
- Transdisciplinary assessment and intervention of pediatric populations
- Entrepreneurship, marketing, and business principles for Speech-Language Pathologists (SLP’s)
- Global perspectives of Speech-Language Pathology (SLP)
- Spanish phonetics and phonology for SLPs working with bilingual populations
- Leadership and administration in SLP
Choose one: Dunkin’, Starbucks, or a local cafe?
This is a hard one for a Puerto Rican coffee lover! Starbucks triple shot espresso 🙂
If you weren’t in your current role, what job do you think you’d secretly love?
I LOVE what I do! I love teaching and I love higher education administration, but… I would love to study archeology; I am passionate about history and evolution.
If the Communication Disorders MS had a theme song, what would you choose?
Climb Every Mountain
Climb every mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every highway,
Every path you know.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
‘Till you find your dream.
A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.
What advice would you give to someone trying to make the most of grad school at Emerson?
Make your journey about LEARNING; never a quest for GRADES and, most importantly, ENJOY every second. Learning is meant to be enjoyed!
Thank you to Dr. Bou for her thoughtful responses and for letting the Emerson community take a deeper look into the faculty that make this institution as bright and diverse as it is! Follow along for more Faculty in Focus articles coming soon!
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