About the Program

Currently, this program is only available to current OSU MA-SLP students. We plan to offer a stand-alone certificate program in the future. Please check back in Spring 2027 for updates. 

The Bilingual MA-SLP Certificate Program provides specialized training for current OSU MA-SLP students who wish to serve bilingual and multilingual populations. Through coursework, clinical practicum, and a capstone experience, students develop culturally responsive assessment and intervention skills. The certificate enhances career readiness for bilingual clinical roles. 

Why Complete the Bilingual Certificate?

Multilingual clients are now part of nearly every SLP caseload, whether the SLP is bilingual or not! In an ASHA survey of more than 200 SLPs:

• 100% report having at least one multilingual client,
• 40% report that more than one third of their clients are multilingual, and
• 25% report that at least half of their current caseload consists of multilingual clients.
• At the same time, only 8.5% of SLPs in health care self-identify as multilingual service providers, and
• 70% of these providers report that there are more job openings than job seekers in their settings.
• Nearly one in three SLPs (29%) report they cannot comply with their organizational policies for providing services to culturally and linguistically diverse clients because of limited access to interpreters and multilingual colleagues.
• The Bilingual MA-SLP Certificate is designed to prepare clinicians who can meet this demand and deliver the assessment and intervention practices that current evidence supports.
• Multilingual SLP involvement improves outcomes across pediatric and adult caseloads:

Aphasia recovery

• 100% of bilingual patients with primary progressive aphasia improve naming in both languages following multilingual anomia therapy; 70–80% demonstrate cross-linguistic transfer (Grasso et al., 2021).

Early literacy

• Following Spanish literacy interventions delivered by multilingual SLPs, 80% of first-grade dual language learners master age-level morphosyntax in both English and Spanish (Bedore et al., 2020).

Parent-mediated intervention

• When multilingual SLPs train parents to deliver intervention in the home language, 100% of parents report high satisfaction and triple the number of times they read with their children each week (Ijalba, 2015).

Clinician confidence

• Multilingual SLPs are more than twice as likely as monolingual SLPs to report confidence working with multilingual clients (57% vs. 24%) (Narayanan & Ramsdell, 2022).

Apply

Please review the Bilingual MA-SLP Certificate Program Advising Form. A link to the admissions form is available under the Required Forms section.