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

“This donation has and continues to help in providing our students with additional learning opportunities and materials,” 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 graduation.”

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; two iPads which students practice on as the device is used by patients with difficulty communicating verbally; and a one-day workshop for students led by world-renowned speaker, Debra Goshulak from The Speech and Stuttering Institute to speak about motor speech disorders and therapy in preschool children.

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.