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I'm here today at the Dubard school with Dr. Maureen Martin who is the Director of Dubard
school. Now, Dubard school has a lot of exciting things going on, but it is a long time jewel
in the Southern Miss crown, and I've wanted to hear a little more about what's happening,
and what's happening is its' 50th anniversary. So Dr. Martin, in a few words, tell me about
the history of the Dubard school. Well, the history is amazing because Dr. Dubard was
brought here when we didn't even have a speech and hearing degree program or a separate department,
but there was a university faculty member who's child had lost language and hearing
as a result of Asian flu. So Dr. McCain and United Way and some private donors went together
to bring her here and she had an empty classroom and three children and they said they had
money for one year, but they made her promise to stay for two. Things have grown a lot since
then. I would say so, now where was she before? She was a general ed elementary teacher, and
she had taught in Jackson, in Natchez, and Florida, and a number of different places,
and then she became one of Mississippi's first Speech Correctionists as they were called
in those days. And ultimately she became a nationally certified Speech and Language Pathologist,
Audiologist , and educator of the Deaf. She was from Grenada County. So that was 50 years,
how have things changed? Well, I've been here 36 of the 50 years which doesn't seem possible
but we have changed in growth in terms of numbers of children served which of course
means we can train more university students. In the last ten years we've grown about, in
about 15 years we've grown from about 3 and a half staff to about 35. Enormous growth
in numbers of children served directly through the full time enrollment program and out client
services, and much growth in our professional development program as well. How many children
do you serve. We have 80 children full time, they come from about 15 counties and about
20 school districts, and then we'll have anywhere from 25 to 40 on out client therapy. Help
us to understand a couple of things, now the Dubard school is a school system right? Well,
it is under the Mississippi code it is a university based program. We are a public school, we're
an extension of public schools. Located on a university campus. That's right. How does
this public school, located on a university campus work with the university? You know
it's a unique and rich relationship, we are very fortunate to have about 20 school districts
that send their children with significant problems to us. But we're also one of three
clinical programs within the department of speech and hearing sciences within the college
of health. And so that means that university students who are majoring in speech and language
pathology, audiology, and deaf education can come here and work side by side getting 100
percent supervision and learn from some master professionals. And so it really enriches their
degree programs. Now other teachers at other places also come and learn here, how does
that work. Well, we of course do training in the Dubard association method which is
the multi sensory structured language approach that we teach here, but we also teach it not
only to university students working on degrees, but to general ed teachers, speech language
pathologists, special educators who want to come and learn these unique techniques and
take them back to their own sites, and people actually come from around the country as well
as around the state to learn these techniques and we also send trainers out across the country
to take this methodology to others. We know we can only serve a certain number of children
under this roof, but we can reach hundreds of thousands more by training other professionals,
so that's very important to us. Well the Dubard school has spent 50 years not just making
a difference in lives, but making the difference in many lives, and now you are looking to
the next 50 years and you've just launched a two million dollar capital campaign. That's
right. Well our funding is unique and challenging, we're partly funded through the Mississippi
Department of Education. And we're a United Way agency, but it takes a considerable amount
of private funding to compliment the state funding to make all of this work. And so the
capital campaign has as one of its major goals to develop an endowment. We know that we must
look to the future. We're 50 years old, we'll always need dollars for current use projects
and needs, but we also need to be looking to the future. One of the things we never
want to have happen is to close a classroom because we don't have the private dollars
to go with the state dollars. If we don't have the children we can't train as many university
students and so that really affects our mission. So it's, I always tell our visitors this is
a great university community, public private partnership that makes all of this work. Well
that's a far sighted goal and one that we certainly wish you well for and we hope and
we know that you're going to get a lot of support. Thank you. You do a lot of good.
Well it's a privilege. Maureen Martin, the Dubard school.