Durham College’s (DC) Communicative Disorders Assistant (CDA) graduate certificate program has once again received a generous $2,500 donation, as well as a serenade from The Oshawa Horseless Carriagemen, on behalf of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s Harmonize for Speech fund.

Items purchased using the annual donation include The Baby Signing Book, authored by former CDA professor Sara Bingham and received by all students in the program; a GoTalk 9+ portable, programmable communication device, used to teach young children to communicate using a customizable picture overlay, which students will learn to program and use when working with clients. A one-day workshop for the students was also sponsored using the donation funds; this year’s speaker will be Debra Goshulak from The Speech and Stuttering Institute to speak about motor speech disorders and therapy in preschool children.

“This donation has and continues to help in providing our students with additional learning opportunities and materials while in the program,” said Sherry Hinman, professor and interim program coordinator of the CDA program. “The items we are able to purchase using the donation allow current, as well as future students the opportunity to excel during their time at the college and succeed in the field following their graduation.”

The CDA program is a one-year, three-semester graduate certificate program that prepares students for work, under the guidance of qualified speech-language pathologists and/or audiologists, providing speech and language therapy to children and adults.

The Harmonize for Speech fund was established nearly 40 years ago as a fundraising project of the Barbershop Harmony Society and continues to provide support for various organizations and projects. This is the tenth year the Barbershop Harmony Society has supported the growth and success of the CDA program, but the first year the students were lucky enough to receive a barbershop-style performance.