{"id":2340,"date":"2017-10-13T09:46:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T13:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/?p=2340"},"modified":"2018-03-23T10:02:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:02:45","slug":"phd-student-finds-her-voice-in-the-division-of-speech-and-hearing-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/2017\/10\/phd-student-finds-her-voice-in-the-division-of-speech-and-hearing-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD Student Finds Her Voice in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jenni Shafer, a PhD student in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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PhD student Jenni Shafer hopes her newly discovered research passions will lower barriers in an often-overlooked and under-researched issue facing adults.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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In June of 2013, Jenni Shafer was kicked in the head by a horse. The four years since that accident have been arduous, yet rewarding: they have brought her where she is today, as a PhD student in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences.<\/p>\n

Jenni has always had a passion for working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It is the reason she began volunteering at the North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center in 2004. The facility provides hands-on therapy to children and adults with physical, emotional, and mental challenges through equine-assisted activities and therapies. In 2006, she became a\u00a0PATH certified<\/a>\u00a0instructor.<\/p>\n

Jenni said her experiences at the Center directly influenced her decision to apply to the Department of Allied Health Sciences\u2019 Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling program in 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found the program I thought \u2018wow, this great. This is perfect. I can work with people with disabilities,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Jenni found herself on a different path, however, as she progressed throughout the program, working primarily with individuals with psychiatric illnesses such as eating disorders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t what I originally started off wanting to do,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it ended up being a great experience and another aspect of working with people with mental health issues, the psychiatric piece that I hadn\u2019t had experience with before.\u201d<\/p>\n

She graduated from the program in 2009 after interning at the\u00a0UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders<\/a>\u00a0and then went on to work for a research organization where she conducted rater training for pharmaceutical trials.<\/p>\n

But when her father died of a stroke in 2012, Jenni found herself needing more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to change my path, but I didn\u2019t know in what way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Still, she remained at the North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center, a hobby and a passion that brought her great fulfillment. It was also the place that brought that catalyst for change when, on June 4, 2013, she found herself caught between two agitated horses. Jenni was knocked down and kicked in the head. She underwent an emergency craniotomy at UNC Hospitals and woke up the next day in the ICU.<\/p>\n

Immediately after the injury, she battled aphasia, an acquired language disorder that can affects one\u2019s ability to express or understand language. She likens the disorder to the tipping and scattering of \u201cword files\u201d in one\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have all your language, it\u2019s just kind of muddled,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her aphasia resolved almost entirely just weeks after her injury, but she continued to combat apraxia of speech, a motor speech disorder that impacts the brain\u2019s ability to plan and carry out speech production.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still have some lasting effects from that, which you can probably hear if you talk with me long enough,\u201d Jenni said.<\/p>\n

After her injury, she began researching the disorder that continued to hinder her speech. She was shocked by how little information was available on apraxia of speech in adults, as most of what her search yielded pertained to developmental apraxia of speech in children.<\/p>\n