SUNY New Paltz Student Earns National Speech and Hearing Honors

NEW PALTZ — Donna Linsig, who received a bachelor’s degree in 1996 from the State University of New York at New Paltz, has received Student Honors from the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA). She was nominated for the award by students and faculty from New Paltz.

As president of the SUNY New Paltz chapter of NSSLHA, Linsig has made numerous contributions to the campus-based organization. Her achievements include implementing a suggestion box; creating an attractive bulletin board for members and an interactive one for young clients; organizing a lecture on deaf culture and American Sign Language (ASL); and designing and implementing a simple ASL class for the campus. She has also been instrumental in establishing and managing an award system for NSSLHA participation, as well as several fundraising events and projects, including an NSSLHA picnic and creation and sale of a mug with NSSLHA logo to raise money for a scholarship fund. Linsig, who resides in Newburgh, is currently working with another student to mount a stuttering-awareness event to be held in October 1999.

Adelaide Haas, a professor in communication disorders at the New Paltz campus and the advisor to the local chapter of NSSLHA, says “Donna is a returning student who has launched into the communication disorders program with a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm. She shows exceptional leadership skills, using a truly collaborative model, as president of the New Paltz NSSLHA chapter. And, as a student in my classes, she’s very concerned and hard-working.”

Linsig was recently accepted into SUNY New Paltz’s highly competitive master’s program in communication disorders. She received a 4.0 for her undergraduate work and, in 1997-98, taught third graders in the Hyde Park Central School District before returning to New Paltz to undertake graduate studies in speech and language pathology. “I always wanted to be a teacher,” she says, “and the communication disorders program takes my strengths as a teacher and focuses them in a medical field. The field is so vast and I’m looking forward to choosing an area of specialization. Communication is the essence of being human, she said.