Clarification about applying to the MA-SLP graduate program and option for participation in OMNIE:
Approaching graduation and applying to graduate school can be a stressful time. During this time, it is especially important that you, as a budding professional, stay calm and be thoughtful as well as strategic as to how you obtain information and plan for your future. A lot of questions have been asked of late regarding the OMNIE Speech-Language Pathology Internship Program (I’ll refer to it simply as the OMNIE Program). In this letter, I intend to provide you with the resources so you can find the right answers to allow you to plan appropriately.
The OMNIE program involves several entities, including you, the university you attend for graduate school, the school district at which you will ultimately work at for at least four years, and the Ohio Department of Education. Each entity has a role and it is important that you understand their functions. The OMNIE Web site explains these roles clearly; please refer to: http://omnie.org/Educational%20Opportunities/internship_overview.html. To summarize a couple points, if you choose to be considered for the OMNIE program, you need to send a “preliminary application” to OMNIE by January 1, 2010. This in no way guarantees your admission to graduate school, but simply gets you “on the books” with OMNIE so they can let the participating universities know who, of their applicants, should be considered for the OMNIE program. In that sense, OMNIE’s preliminary application is similar to registering, as it does not guarantee admission to any university program.
There are five universities participating in the OMNIE program. When you graduate, your degree will come from the university you attend. In that regard, you will still need to apply for admission to all of the universities of interest to you. In doing so, you will also need to adhere to the application guidelines for each university to which you apply. You will need to look at each university’s Web site to find these guidelines.
Each participating university (which includes Miami University, Ohio University, University of Akron, University of Cincinnati, and University of Toledo) can only admit 10 OMNIE students per year. While each university will have some minor variations in how they handle OMNIE applications versus standard master’s applications, the two programs are similarly competitive. In other words, you likely will not have a competitive advantage by applying to the OMNIE versus the standard SLP program.
OMNIE has posted a list of FAQs that can be very helpful in this process. These can be found at: http://omnie.org/Educational%20Opportunities/Internship_FAQ.html.
OMNIE’s preliminary application can be found at:
http://omnie.org/Educational%20Opportunities/PreliminaryApplicationIntern.php.
OMNIE’s application for Ohio School Districts’ support for SLPs can be found at:
http://omnie.org/Educational%20Opportunities/district_application.php.
For questions specific to the OMNIE program and Ohio University, feel free to contact me at digiovan@ohio.edu. For questions about the OMNIE program in general and questions related to school district assignments, you can contact Nada Allender at nada@ameritech.net. Please, before you contact anyone, do your homework. Almost every answer is already available to you. Don’t listen to what others (i.e., fellow students, friends, etc.) might have said, find out for yourself. If you have a special situation or are unable to understand the information on the Web sites, then it is appropriate to follow up with an email.
Jeffrey J. DiGiovanni, Ph.D., CCC-A
Associate Professor & Coordinator of Professional Programs
Director of the Auditory Psychophysics and Signal Processing Laboratory
www.hearingsystemsresearch.com
School of Hearing, Speech and Language Sciences
Ohio University - Athens