A by-product of working with our development officer to set up the Speech and Hearing Gift account is her knowledge of our program and its needs. This year she identified a local foundation that she thought would support our speech, language and hearing center. The foundation's mission is to assist children within the community. Faculty discussion led to a proposal to the foundation for a children s library within our center. The faculty wanted to promote literacy in their language training and provide many of our low-income families with quality reading materials for use at home.
Faculty are currently in the process of ordering children's books for the new library.
Listen to all offers . When someone within or outside of the university presents you with an offer that may benefit the department, listen. At first it may seem that the department is unable to participate, but creative thinking may produce a good idea. No one on our faculty had the expertise or interest in leading this project. Rather than say no to the offer, the department decided to hire a speech-language pathology consultant with expertise with this population to head up the project.