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Student experience
Overview
As a Master of Speech Pathology student, you will be passionate about communication access and improving the lives of people with communication and/or swallowing difficulties.
Throughout the two-year (full-time) program, you will experience a range of clinical placements, giving you exposure to a variety of different practice areas.
Day-to-day experience
Located within the Parkville precinct of the Melbourne School of Health Sciences, the Master of Speech Pathology will provide you with a great sense of community.
Small class sizes allow you to connect meaningfully with your fellow peers and take advantage of a diverse range of teaching approaches. Students will gain knowledge from expert teaching staff who have established research portfolios across areas of speech pathology.
Learning mode
This course has a unique focus on research and evidence-based practice, population health, and neurobiological and genetic bases of communication and swallowing disorders.
Practical subjects are threaded throughout the regular coursework for the Master of Speech Pathology. This joint focus on practice and theory will help facilitate your translation of theoretical knowledge to clinical skills.
Diverse clinical partnerships will provide you with rich placement experiences and valuable career networks, which are useful across a wide range of career options.
In your final year, you will be assigned to a research project under the supervision of a member of staff. This will equip you with invaluable research skills and experience and preparation of a manuscript for publication in an international peer-reviewed journal.
Opportunities
As a student of the Master of Speech Pathology program, you will have access to unique onsite clinical experiences, including the FEES clinic (swallowing assessment) – the only one of its kind at any university in Melbourne.
Read about Lottie's experience below:
Lottie Morison
I’ve wanted to do speech pathology since I was young. Some of my cousins were diagnosed with autism and saw a speech pathologist and so did one of my grandparents, for help with swallowing.
The course is wonderful, I am loving it. We’re exposed to a big range of learning opportunities, a lot of clinical experiences and very impressive and inspiring guest lecturers.
It is making me re-evaluate what area I’d like to work in. I came in thinking I wanted to work with kids, but on my most recent placement I worked with adults with acquired neurological conditions, which was very complex and rewarding. So now I’m reconsidering.
Our coursework has also been very diverse and interesting – the people teaching us are passionate. I’m really looking forward to starting my thesis, which makes up 25 per cent of our second year. At Melbourne we have the chance do our thesis with supervisors from some of the country’s leading research institutes, which is particularly exciting.
I’m interested in researching speech and language impairments in children with genetic disorders, but there’s a lot of variety in the course for students to pursue their own areas of interest. I know some other students are interested in researching voice and performance, for example.
Our cohort is small – in my year there are 60 of us. I came from a very big undergraduate course and I didn’t know anyone! But this course is really lovely – we do everything together and so we all end up knowing and supporting each other.
The course has really ignited a passion in me to give back to society and make positive change. Speech pathologists are often the advocate for a patient when they are accessing other services, because communication underpins everything.