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Over the next 10 months, the CAPCSD Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Committee will engage in a series of conversations with the Multicultural Constituency Groups (MCCGs) affiliated with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. DEIB Committee Co-Chair Kimberly Green and Secretary Deborah Scheble will lead the planning and coordination of these conversations on behalf of the committee. These meetings represent an opportunity to strengthen relationships, learn from one another, and deepen the ways CAPCSD supports academic and clinical education across communication sciences and disorders.

The MCCGs bring an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, lived experience, professional expertise, and community connection to our professions. Although independent of ASHA, these organizations address the perspectives and priorities of specific populations and engage in work that includes student support, professional recruitment, advocacy, research, leadership development, networking, and the advancement of culturally responsive speech, language, and hearing services.

Collectively and, at present, the groups represented include the Asian Pacific Islander Speech-Language-Hearing Caucus, National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing, Disability Caucus, Haitian Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, Jewish Caucus, L’GASP–LGBTQIA+ Caucus, Men’s Constituency Caucus, Middle East and North Africa Caucus, Native American Caucus, and the South Asian Caucus. While each has its own history, mission, priorities, and community, their work offers important perspectives for those responsible for preparing the next generation of speech-language pathologists, audiologists, researchers, and educators.

The Gift is in the Intentional Exchange.

We anticipate that these conversations will create space to learn directly from constituency groups about what they are seeing, experiencing, questioning, and envisioning while also sharing the perspectives and experiences of CAPCSD and its member programs. Each exchange, and ongoing exchanges, can deepen our collective understanding of the experiences of students and faculty, barriers to recruitment and retention, culturally and linguistically responsive education and practice, accessibility, mentorship, professional identity, belonging, and the needs of the communities our professions engage with.

These conversations can also bring additional perspectives to the questions academic and clinical programs are presently navigating in our evolving political and academic climate. Across the MCCGs, priorities include removing barriers to participation and increasing accessibility, strengthening culturally and linguistically responsive services and education, developing mentorship, increasing representation within the professions, advancing research, and supporting the cultivation of professional communities in which students and professionals can thrive.

Most importantly, this initiative is about relationship-building rather than a single conversation. By meeting with MCCGs throughout the year, the DEIB Committee hopes to strengthen connections that can inform CAPCSD’s ongoing work and create opportunities for continued dialogue, collaboration, and shared learning in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

As an organization devoted to academic and clinical education, CAPCSD has much to contribute to these conversations—and much to gain from them. The knowledge, experiences, questions, and perspectives exchanged with the MCCGs can help all of us reflect more deeply on how we educate, mentor, support, and prepare future professionals.

When we create intentional opportunities to learn from one another, we expand not only who is part of the conversation, but what becomes possible because of it. We look forward to sharing the outcomes.

Leslie Grubler Ed.D., CCC-SLP
Director of Clinical Education and Clinical Services
Lehman College, CUNY
CAPCSD – VP of Organizational Advancement
Board Liaison, CAPCSD DEIB Committee

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