Stacey Sangtian ’11 did her homework before choosing her career path in communication sciences and disorders (COMD). After graduating from the College of Charleston Honors College with a bachelor’s degree in biology, the Myrtle Beach, S.C.-native spent a year doing service work in New Orleans and then two years conducting nanotoxicology research at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences after receiving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award.
It was during her role as a preschool teacher’s assistant working with nuns throughDominican Volunteers USA in New Orleans that Sangtian’s path first began to veer toward COMD. She remembers a student who knocked over another child’s block tower and his limited speech intelligibility made it difficult for Sangtian to understand whether the child had done the action on purpose or by accident.
“After piecing it together that it was an accident, I thanked him for trying to tell me the truth and he went back to playing—no hard feelings, no grudges, just a smile of satisfaction knowing that he was understood,” she says. “That moment stuck with me.” Something else that stuck with Sangtian from that year of service work was that she should view her career, whatever it may turn out to be, as her ministry.
For more of the story, visit the USC Arnold School of Public Health’s blog!
No comments yet.