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Jessica Gebert, a graduate student in the Ellmer College of Health Sciences at ��㴫ý, has been awarded the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Scholar Fellowship for 2024–25. The award honors exceptional graduate students and is a recognition that Jessica says came at just the right time.

“I was very encouraged,” Jessica said. “It felt like I had support not just from people I knew, but also from the university as a whole. That felt especially nice going into my PhD and doing research for the university.”

Currently completing a hospital-based externship, Jessica will graduate from the master’s program in Speech-Language Pathology this summer and is already preparing for her next chapter. She’s been accepted into ��㴫ý’s PhD program in Kinesiology and Rehabilitation, where she plans to continue her research on cognitive linguistics and rehabilitation for individuals recovering from strokes and brain injuries.

“I really wanted to continue pursuing speech in a way that wasn’t all speech,” she said. “I wanted something that was more interdisciplinary. So with Kinesiology and Rehabilitation, it’s meant for people who have their master’s or entry-level doctorates in physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, athletic training—all of those fields. I wanted something that I could work together with people in different professions because that’s kind of how it is in the field. You’re not only going to work with speech pathologists.”

Jessica says the fellowship funds will help her build a personal library of resources. “It can be hard as a new clinician to find those resources,” she said. “But these funds will help me in building a library I can pull from, which will be beneficial for my future as well.”

Her passion for communication science began with her own experiences. After living in Austria as a child and struggling with language barriers, she was drawn to language-based studies. She initially majored in linguistics before discovering her interest in client-facing care through speech-language pathology. She found a mentor in Dr. Stacie Raymer, who introduced her to the possibilities of working with adults with communication deficits.

“Dr. Raymer has the same interests that I do in working with adults with communication deficits,” Jessica said. “She really believed in me continuing my education, even when I didn’t think it would be possible for me to pursue a PhD. This is really surreal.”

Throughout her time at ��㴫ý, Jessica says she found unwavering support from faculty, naming Dr. Stacie Raymer, Dr. Danika Pfeiffer, Dr. Rachel Johnson, and Ms. Kelly Vega as key mentors or influences. “Ms. Vega really made me believe this was meant for me,” she said. “She was the one who asked me to do a presentation in front of the whole class during one of the seminars about the therapies I was doing with my aphasia patient, so that also made me think like ‘wow, this is really for me.’”

When asked what advice she’d share with future Monarchs, her response is full of perspective: “If you struggle and think it’s so hard just know you do belong, everyone is feeling this way, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”