One of the caucus goals is to nurture current and future API audiology and speech-language pathology professionals and offer leadership opportunities for API members. The purpose of the API Graduate School Panel event is to offer advice and support about graduate school application for API student members.
API Graduate School Panel
2024 API Panel: Dorcas Yeoh, Mei-Hua Li, Yuri Lizardo, Delphanie Wu Abija, Herman Cheah, Janella Velasco and Andrea Rivera.
Schedule: 5:30pm Pacific Standard Time on Oct 4th (Fri)
Dorcas Yeoh is a 2nd year M.A.-SLP graduate student at the University of Kansas. Originally from Malaysia, she is trilingual, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and English. As a student researcher in the Comprehension and Language Learning (CALL) lab, Dorcas works closely with autistic children. Her clinical interests include multilingualism, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), as well as speech and language disorders in the pediatric population. Her hobbies include cafe hopping, people-watching, and journaling.
Mei-Hua Li, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LABA is currently a 2nd year graduate student at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. She values interdisciplinary collaboration and aspires to become a dually certified SLP-BCBA to better serve patients using expertise from both fields. She started off as a CSD major in undergraduate, ever since working with autistic individuals and that led her to pursue her M.S. and Ph.D. in ABA. Her research interests include first and second-language acquisition, verbal behavior, generative instruction, and aphasia.
Yuri Lizardo (he/him/his) is a second-year MA SLP graduate student at San Diego State University. He is currently completing his externship at an acute and outpatient hospital. He is passionate about addressing health disparities in speech and promoting diversity within speech-language pathology. In his free time he enjoys going to the beach and exploring new restaurants.
Dr. Delphanie Wu Abija is an audiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She completed her AuD at Vanderbilt University and her externship at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. She provides diagnostic and rehabilitative audiologic care to pediatric patients and their families in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Her interests include pediatric amplification, counseling, and vestibular disorders. She is currently pursuing a Master of Social Work from West Chester University to enhance her practice as an audiologist.
Born in Malaysia, Herman Cheah, B.S. (he/him/his) n is a first-year MA-SLP student at the University of Kansas (KU). As a Chinese-Malaysian, he is multilingual in Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and English. Herman’s clinical interests include working with pediatric populations and multilingual families. As a research assistant for the Speech in Little Bilinguals Lab (SLBL) at KU, his research interests lie in the area of creating tools to assess speech and language abilities in children who speak languages for which few or no normed assessments are available. In his free time, he loves to hang out with people, try/explore new things in the area, and travel to different places.
Janella Velasco is a 2nd year MS SLP graduate student at the University of Southern California (USC). She is Filipina-American and is bilingual in Tagalog and English. She currently serves as president of her chapter NSSLHA at USC and is a member of National NSSLHA’s Inclusion Diversity Equity Action (IDEA) Work Group. Janella’s clinical interests include serving those with complex communication needs, dysphagia, and multilingualism.
Andrea Rivera is a speech-language pathologist with more than 10 years experience in acute care primarily in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She has served as a clinical instructor for several graduate students at her hospital, as well as social media director for the SLP alumni council at her alma mater, the George Washington University. Clinical interests include dysphagia, traumatic brain injury and head and neck cancer. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two young children, working out and volunteering with animals.
2022 API Panel: Sue Yang, Dilys Tan, Emily Lee
Schedule: 5:30pm Pacific Standard Time on Oct 26th (Wed)
Sue Yang: I’m Sue Yang, a bilingual Hmong-English SLP. I was a post-baccalaureate SLP student and graduated in 2020 with my Master’s degree from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Currently, I am an elementary school-based SLP in Minneapolis, as well as a per diem acute care SLP with a healthcare system in the Twin Cities.
Dilys Tan: Born in sunny Singapore, Dilys is a second-year graduate student getting her MS in Speech-Language Pathology from Boston University. Dilys’ clinical interests include multilingualism, voice disorders, dysphagia, and cognitive-communication disorders, but she is open to working with and learning from all populations. In her free time, Dilys loves to cook, toss a frisbee, and play mahjong with friends.
Emily Lee: Emily is a 4th year Doctoral student of Audiology at the University of Colorado Boulder and will complete her degree in May 2023. Emily is completing her 4th-year externship at the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Along with her graduate studies, Emily invested in leadership opportunities and research. She served as the President of the Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) chapter within her program and she currently serves as the Vice President of Planning on the Executive Council Committee of the National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association (National NSSLHA). Emily works in the Brain and Behavior Lab on her campus as a research assistant and focused her research on the examination of how mask use may pose challenges between clinicians and their patients in audiology clinics and other medical clinics in the domains of listening effort, cognition, and rehabilitation. Her clinical areas of interest include vestibular evaluation/treatment, hearing aids, central auditory processing disorder, tinnitus, and aural rehabilitation.
2020 API Panel: Delphanie Wu, Tiffany Thai, Linna Jingyu Jin, Teresa Girolamo, Adrienne Sheh, Elizabeth Romero, Karina Camposagrado, Caryn Mo, Kimberly Lin, Angela Chen, Katrin Gabriel, Andrea Rivera, May Wu, Dr. Emily Wang and Dr. Ying-Chiao Tsao.
