Communicative Sciences and Disorders (CSAD) FLC

Summer 2025 - Fall 2025

I updated CSAD 221 which is our graduate Dysphagia and the Medical Setting course. We worked as a faculty team to recreate our curriculum. We used CAA, CTC, ASHA Knowledge and Competencies descriptions, and the crosswalk of all of these documents and our courses. The purpose was to update our curriculum for current medical practices and evidence based practice for assessment and treatment across the lifespan.
I felt clear in this review process as we had current guidance from all of our certification entities. I also work in the field currently and am able to see the needed changes and updates needed. I also reviewed current evidence based research for assessment and treatment for pediatric through adult swallowing and feeding.

For review of the syllabus, I made sure to consider alignment to our certification standards, clarity, coverage of current information, ho skills and knowledge were to be assessed, inclusivity policies and considerations for marginalized populations, and overall adherence to standards of care.
This activity deepened my understanding of the Competencies and Standards from ASHA, CAA and CTC and how our program is in alignment with those.
I may revise the standards sections as they take up 20 pages of the syllabus. I feel that maybe we should make each of the standard sets into a link to take the reader directly to those points in the actual documents.

I plan to review the other syllabi our faculty created. I am also creating another syllabus and look forward to this process bringing our department into current practices and preparing our students more fully for the field of Speech-Language Pathology.

**Faculty Bio**
	Dr. Lisa D’Angelo has been a Speech-Language Pathologist for 36 years in hospitals, clinics, and schools. She is currently an Associate Professor at California State University, Sacramento, teaching dysphagia, neurological development, disorders, assessment, and treatment. Her research focuses on cognitive-communication deficits after TBI, Concussion, Long Covid, and Dysphagia. Additionally, she works in the acute medical setting with pediatric patients (NICU and PICU), as well as adults (ER to ICU), and as a school Dysphagia/Feeding Specialist. She has presented nationally and internationally, and published about TBI, school-based Dysphagia services, and concussion/Mild TBI. She has been active in CSHA as a District 2 Director, District 2 Advisory Board, Co-Conference Content Chair, Finance Committee, Medical SLP Committee, and chair of the School-Age TBI Task Force. She advocates for the Medical SLP community in all of her work as a clinician, researcher, and educator.

Funding
	This work was supported by: US Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution Project STEM4Equity P031C210012 *Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the US Department of Education.