Andrea Etkie always knew she wanted to be a speech-language pathologist. After earning her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Florida, she began her career working with geriatric patients in skilled nursing and home health care.
But a temporary assignment in a Florida school district in 2014 shifted her focus in a way she never expected. Etkie was assigned to work with a high school student with Rett syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that affects communication andmotor skills, primarily in girls. The student used a speech-generating device controlled with her eyes—technology that opened a new world of communication and sparked Etkie’s deep interest in the condition.
That experience launched more than a decade of work with individuals with Rett syndrome and ultimately led her to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studied under Dr. Karen Erickson, director of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and a leading researcher in the field.
“Karen’s writing was just so different from the rest of the literature,” Etkie said. “She showed me that what I was seeing was right—that they were doing things.”
At UNC, Etkie’s research focused on communication and literacy in people with Rett syndrome. In one study, she and her team tracked the visual attention of girls with Rett syndrome during shared reading with their parents.
“We saw that parents could be trained to learn how to read to their children in a really engaging way,” she said. “The girls’ eyes were tracking not just on the pictures of the page, but also on the words.”
Her dissertation explored how three girls under the age of 14 with Rett syndrome viewed themselves as readers, writers and communicators—an approach that centered their voices in a field where they are often overlooked.
While at Carolina, Etkie also helped launch the Rett Syndrome Center of Excellence at UNC Hospitals in February 2024. She worked alongside pediatric neurologists to establish the center’s speech-language pathology program, which now serves as a vital resource for families across the region.
This fall, Etkie will begin a new role as an assistant professor at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, where she will teach in the online master’s program in speech-language pathology. She also plans to continue her research on Rett syndrome and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).
“There’s still so much to learn,” she said. “But I’m committed to making sure these voices are heard.”