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The CAPCSD Admissions Committee met twice this summer (May and July). As the Vice President of Admissions, I want to provide you all, our CAPCSD member programs, updates about what we accomplished in the 2025–2026 academic year and where we are going strategically in the 2026–2027 academic year. I will restate this at the end, but all feedback from our member programs is welcomed.

Successes in 2025–2026

Under the leadership of Dr. Caitlin Price and due to the proactivity of CAPCSD Admission Committee members, the Committee was incredibly productive last year. Here are a few of the highlights:

  • Reorganization of the Admissions Committee by removing siloed subcommittees and expanding of the number of committee volunteers to better reflect the heterogeneity across CAPCSD member programs.
  • A successful 2026 CAPCSD Admissions Summit, led by Dr. Kerry Mandulak and Dr. Danai Fannin.
  • Continued progress of both the CSDCAS Holistic Review Tool Working Group and the Open Data Initiative Dataset Working Group.
  • A new and improved relationship with the CAPCSD Online Professional Development Committee (i.e., liaising to develop new CEU opportunities for member programs specifically for admissions-specific topics).
  • Productive discussions—in response to member programs’ questions—about expanding help for admissions beyond the holistic focus (e.g., working with your Graduate Schools, undergraduate student recruitment, faculty shortages, succession planning, etc.)

We want to highlight one particular accomplishment from this year. Due to the hard work of CAPCSD’s Director of Centralized Admissions, Teasha McKinley, member programs now have access to a new “CSDCAS Participant Resources” webpage (https://www.capcsd.org/csdcas-resources-best-practices/). This page provides CSDCAS resources for member programs and easy access to the library of last year’s Admissions Corner articles. Because there will be additional developments related to admissions topics over the next academic year, we eventually will create two separate websites. One will be for CSDCAS-specific resources and the other will focus on broader issues related to graduate education program admissions. Stay tuned for updates.

Strategic Initiatives in 2026–2027

We have multiple goals for the next academic year and will report on our progress throughout the year in the Admissions Corner articles and next year at the 2027 Annual CAPCSD Conference in Atlanta.

  • We will continue to refine the roles of the Vice President of Admissions and the Admissions Committee. This relates to an improved alignment with the CAPCSD strategic plan.
  • In active consideration of member programs’ reported experiences, the Admissions Committee will be the leading group within CAPCSD to support member programs’ recruitment and admissions efforts.
  • We will focus on developing additional tools and resources for recruitment to our graduate education programs. These tools and resources include outreach programs, promotional resources, and partnerships with other allied health professions.
  • We will focus on identifying partnerships that can increase awareness of the professions of audiology and speech-language pathology, as well as communication sciences and disorders at the middle-school, high-school, and undergraduate levels. This is the future of AuD and MA/MS-SLP graduate education recruitment.

On behalf of the CAPCSD Admissions Committee, we wish you all a great start to the Fall 2026 semester. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. As always, if you need help with the admissions processes for your AuD and/or MA/MS graduate education programs, or WebAdMIT and/or CSDCAS, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Admissions Committee and CAPCSD’s Director of Centralized Admissions.

Douglas F. Parham, PhD, CCC-SLP

Vice President of Admissions

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