University of Wyoming

I have come to Laramie in southern Wyoming to visit Associate Professor Mark Guiberson at the University of Wyoming. Dr Guiberson is the director of the Communication Disorders program and Associate Professor of Child Language. Dr Guiberson examined my PhD thesis and we have common interests in the area of working with families of young linguistically diverse children, including children with hearing loss.

The faculty, staff, and students at the University of Wyoming were warm and welcoming. I was privileged to be given a tour of the department and to enjoy the stunning campus with bright yellow sandstone set agains clear blue skies. Dr Guiberson and I spent two days working on the initial stages of a project related to intervention practices for children with hearing loss from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. I joined Dr Mary-Jo Cooley Hidecker in watching her class make their end of semester presentations for their Aural Rehabilitation class. I also sat down with students (and donuts) to describe life in Australia and how university life and speech-language pathology practice was different. As a bonus, I was able to have dinner with the inspiring Professor Mary Hardin-Jones and Professor David Jones.

Off campus, Dr Guiberson showed me some of the beautiful sights of Laramie, including driving as far as the road was plowed in Medicine Bow National Forest. We did make it quite a way up the mountain before all that could be seem by the side of the road were massive snow banks, and eventually the road itself disappeared. We had a walk around and found paw prints in the snow that were definitely too big to belong to a dog, but too small to belong to a bear. Mark suggested it was most likely a mountain lion, one local that I was not keen to meet!

Spring snowbank

Mark and I blinded by the afternoon sun on the snow