I’d like to share an exciting opportunity to connect with SLP faculty and graduate students on campus!
At the New Member Orientation last night (we’ll be sending out the slides and recording soon), I mentioned one of the ways to get involved with CSD professionals on campus is through research. I’m excited to share that the Human Abilities in Bilingual Language Acquisition (HABLA) Lab is currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants (no experience necessary).
Several of our members, including myself, are research assistants in the lab, and I cannot recommend applying enough. Even if you are not interested in pursuing CSD research, this type of experience makes you an extremely competitive candidate for clinical master's programs– especially with the type of research this lab is involved in.
The primary investigator at the UC Irvine lab is our advisor, Elizabeth Peña, Ph.D., CCC-SLP. She is one of the leading researchers in CSD focusing on developmental language disorder (DLD) and bilingualism. The chance to gain experience in a research lab that has significantly contributed to the body of research on DLD is an opportunity that most CSU CSD programs do not offer.
For seniors about to graduate—it’s not too late to get involved! You can continue working in the lab even after graduation. And if you still do not have 3 letters of recommendation for graduate school, this is a great opportunity to earn one. Even if you don’t work directly under Dr. Peña, if you demonstrate dedication and hard work to your Ph.D mentor, she will write you one.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about applying or if you would like more insight about the experience. You can reach out via email or text me at 530-220-2461 :).
The Human Abilities in Bilingual Language Acquisition (HABLA) Laboratory at the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine and the Communication Sciences and Disorders at Temple University focuses on understanding how bilingual individuals organize and access their two language systems. Ultimately, the goal of this inquiry is to better understand the nature of language breakdowns associated with developmental language disorder. The HABLA lab was started by Elizabeth Peña and Lisa Bedore.
Elizabeth Peña is the Primary Investigator of the HABLA lab at UCI. Her research focuses on language impairments in children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. She is particularly interested in how these children acquire new language skills and how they express their conceptual knowledge across two languages. Her work encompasses two interconnected areas: dynamic assessment and semantic development in bilinguals, which contribute to test development. Dr. Peña is the primary contributor to the creation of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA), one of the few reliable tools designed to identify developmental language disorders in Spanish-English bilingual children. In 2024, she was awarded with ASHA’s Honors of the Association, the highest recognition bestowed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association to recognize individuals who have been of such excellence that they have enhanced or altered the course of the professions.
