天美传媒

by Cecil Harris

In May 2013, Nellyzita Nwosu became the first to earn the Ph.D. in the at . Dedicated to treating multicultural children, Dr. Nwosu鈥檚 dissertation鈥斺�淭he Effect of Specific Training for Preparing Speech and Language Providers Who Service Children from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds鈥濃�攃alled attention to the need for more bilingual and multicultural practitioners.

鈥淎 lot of children who are bilingual or from cultures that teachers are not familiar with are sent to special education, and then they鈥檙e stigmatized as special ed kids,鈥� Dr. Nwosu said. 鈥淭here are standardized tests that those kids do poorly on, but in fact the child is bilingual and may be just mixing up words.鈥�

Dr. Nwosu, a native of Nigeria, has 14 years of experience working with speech-impaired and hearing-impaired children in New York City, including the past nine years at P.S. 69 in ethnically diverse Jackson Heights, New York.

After earning a B.S. in Applied Social Science at Binghamton University and an M.S. in Speech Language Pathology at Syracuse University, she pursued her doctorate at Adelphi鈥檚 . Adelphi has a part-time program for those seeking a Ph.D. Conversely, the City University of New York requires students to enroll full time.

鈥淎delphi鈥檚 program has a clinical focus,鈥� Dr. Nwosu said. 鈥淚 love the hands-on work with the kids, to try to figure out the puzzle. And at Adelphi, I realized the importance of doing research to prove there was a need for more bilingual and multicultural educators in our field.鈥�

As part of her doctoral program, Dr. Nwosu worked with faculty advisers Elaine Sands, Ph.D., and Reem Khamis-Dakwar, Ph.D., to develop a DVD showing ESL teachers interacting with children from diverse backgrounds. The project included a seminar at Adelphi in which teachers learned to treat such children and work with families for whom English is not the primary language.

鈥淚f you work in New York schools,鈥� Dr. Sands said, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 do your job effectively if you don鈥檛 know if the child has a speech or language impediment or if the student just doesn鈥檛 understand English.鈥�

Dr. Nwosu, who lives in South Floral Park, New York, said she eventually wants to provide multicultural training for speech language practitioners鈥攁lthough her plate is quite full as a married mother of two sons鈥揓ide, 5, and Tobenna, 3鈥搘ho works full-time.

鈥淚 learned a lot about myself while working on my dissertation鈥攄etermination is the key,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 have as much time to spend with my boys because I was at P.S. 69 or Adelphi or writing papers. I did it all on three hours鈥� sleep a night. I can鈥檛 say enough about my husband, Patrick. He was there for me listening, advising and supporting me. And I can鈥檛 thank Adelphi enough. I felt like I had a family at Adelphi. I don鈥檛 know if I could have done it anywhere else.鈥�