Jobs for communicative disorders majors can emphasize either deafness rehabilitation or a combination of speech pathology and audiology. At the graduate level, they must pick one of those three.

Earl Sever, the chair of the communicative disorders department, said students’ degrees lead them to jobs as:

*Speech pathologists who diagnose and treat speech and language problems. They assess speech and language ability of people of any age. That ability can be impaired by a variety of problems including hearing loss, physiological problems, strokes, traumatic experiences or stuttering.

*Audiologists who evaluate hearing status and recommend treatment for hearing loss. Treatments can include hearing aids and speech therapy from speech pathologists.

*Deafness counselors who focus on helping people with hearing loss get services and adjust psychologically and socially to their hearing impairment.