As a first-year student at WSU, Claire Schrock knew she wanted to become a speech-language pathologist when she discovered they often got to sit on the floor alongside a child, helping them learn how to communicate.
Several years and a bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing sciences later, Schrock found herself doing just that as a graduate student—except she was sitting at a desk in her home, providing virtual assessments to children in Western Europe at 3:00 a.m.
Schrock began providing innovative assessments online to clients throughout the United States and beyond through her work with Babble Boot Camp, a research project spearheaded by Speech and Hearing Sciences faculty members Nancy Potter, PhD, CCC-SLP, and Mark VanDam, PhD.
Created in 2017, Babble Boot Camp is an innovative early intervention method and research program for infants at risk of developing speech and language disorders, such as children with classic galactosemia (CG). Diagnosed in a newborn screening, CG significantly increases a child’s risk for severe speech and language disorders. Babble Boot Camp provides interventions to babies and toddlers ages two to 24 months before they show signs of a speech and language disorder, aiming to prevent or minimize the disorder through a series of screening, activities, and parent training.
When Schrock reached out to faculty with the request to become more involved with community outreach activities during the pandemic, she did not anticipate becoming essential to the operations of a significant, longitudinal research project as researchers follow infants who have completed Babble Boot Camp until age four or later.
“Dr. Potter sold me on it,” said Schrock. “She made the research work accessible when it can be initially intimidating.”
As an undergraduate, Schrock began as a research assistant observing virtual assessment sessions and performing administrative work.
Continuing her involvement as a graduate student, she eventually started conducting virtual assessments with the supervision of Potter as well as coordinating sessions and annual assessments. She also played a key role in communicating with participating families.
“I was seeing children that I saw at two and a half years, and then at three, three and a half years,” said Schrock. “It was so rewarding building those relationships.”
Schrock found her commitment to the research program and her SHS mentors tested when Potter experienced a fall in the summer of 2023, fracturing her vertebrae and barring her from continuing her work with Babble Boot Camp while she healed. Faced with this gap, Schrock stepped up and took on all the work to keep the research project going, including taking over assessments and reports.
During this same period, the grant funding for her position also ran out. That didn’t stop Schrock from continuing the work.
“It’s not a 9-5 job,” said Schrock. “But the interaction between clinician and child is a beautiful thing. I love kids, and that’s always been a huge motivator for me.”
Through her work testing hundreds of children with Babble Boot Camp, Schrock was able to develop unique transferable skills and in-the-field knowledge she would not have otherwise had. She was also able to work with a greater number of diverse clients, co-authored publications with HGG Advances and the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, and participated in the international Galactosemia Foundation Conference.
She also helped create and record new intervention training courses designed to improve speech and language outcomes.
“My name is on a training, which is crazy,” said Schrock. “My graduate experience has opened so many doors.”
With her commitment to Babble Boot Camp and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences going above and beyond, it’s no surprise that Schrock graduated in May 2024 after receiving the 2024 Chancellor’s Excellence Leadership Award and two departmental awards: the Volunteer Service Award as well as the Outstanding Graduate Award. She now works at North Thurston Public School District as an elementary school SLP.
Schrock embraces the role her faculty and research supervisors at college played in her success.
“The relationships I built with them helped me find my qualities and strengths as a person. A clinician. A researcher,” said Schrock. “They saw something in me that I didn’t necessarily see until they showed me it.”