Bilingual career goal leads BW senior down many paths

Becoming a speech therapist takes hard work, but Katie Fowler '20 is doubling down to make her career goals even more challenging to achieve.

Fowler is double majoring in communication sciences and disorders and Spanish with the aim of becoming a bilingual speech therapist.

Beyond the challenge of academic coursework for two majors, Fowler has served as president of the BW Spanish Club (launching a successful Latin American Film Festival), competed as a three-season student-athlete in both cross country and track (notching back-to-back wins on the OAC 4x800 relay team and Academic All-Ohio selection), interned at the Center for Innovation & Growth and worked as a campus tour guide and a tutor.

But that's not all.

Bilingual boots on the ground

On top of all that, Fowler has added a rich layer of experiential learning that makes good use of her Spanish, working for Mission Guatemala, COAR Peace Mission and Mírame Asociación.

She spent the summer of 2018 in Granada, Spain, taking classes and volunteering with Mírame Asociación's summer camp for children with autism spectrum disorder.

"I worked one-on-one with two children during my time at Mírame in order to promote social communication and language development," Fowler explains. "This experience allowed me to combine my two passions of Spanish and speech pathology in a very meaningful way."

Fowler had previously traveled to Mission Guatemala with a small group of BW students to serve the community of Panajachel.

For COAR, she has been part of a BW outreach project to translate letters from children in El Salvador to their U.S. sponsors.

Experiences open doors

"Through working with these organizations and the BW Spanish Program, I feel more connected to the Spanish-speaking community and far more prepared to serve in the future as a bilingual speech therapist," Fowler says.

While she clearly works hard to achieve so much on so many paths, Fowler is quick to attribute her success to her BW mentors.

"My professors and coaches at BW highly encourage community engagement and professional growth," says Fowler. "These types of extracurriculars bolster in-class education as well as open doors for internships, experiences abroad and future career paths."