2025 Student Awards

The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders is proud to announce the recipients of their 2025 Student Awards. These students were selected for their outstanding performance both academically and in their clinical placements outside the classroom.

Student	Award	About
	MS Distance Education Outstanding Student: Molly O'Malley	Not only has Molly  O'Malley maintained a 4.0 while in our program, she also achieved the highest score on the Praxis licensing exam of all Distance Education students in this year's class.  She has been an exemplary student, exhibiting professional behavior in both academic courses and in clinical settings, positively representing the program.  Clinical supervisors in multiple settings praised her ability to engage clients and execute evidence-based practice to meet the needs of each client. She has been exemplary in exhibiting professionalism and dedication to her clients and the field of speech-language pathology.
	Sharon M Webber Scholarship: Christen Townsend	Christen Townsend has been an excellent student in the MS program in Speech Language Pathology. Clinical supervisors noted that she demonstrates strong intervention skills in a variety of clinical areas and only needed limited support in modifying intervention plans and strategies. She also demonstrates strong professionalism, collaboration, and ethics. While pursuing her MS, she has worked full-time as a Speech language pathology assistant in Florence District One, all while being married with two small children. She maintains an excellent balance of work, life, and graduate school, while excelling in all of these areas.
	MS Residential Outstanding Student: Samantha Feeney	Samantha Feeney has been an exceptional student, bringing intellectual curiosity, clinical insight, and a deep personal commitment to the field of speech-language pathology. Samantha consistently excelled academically and has been a catalyst for rich, thoughtful classroom discussions. As a clinician, she stood out among her peers for her ability to build rapport, think critically in the moment, and remain focused on the underlying purpose of therapeutic goals and activities. Her lived experience navigating hearing loss provides her with a rare depth of empathy and understanding that enhances her clinical work. She has served as a generous and effective mentor to first-year students, contributing meaningfully to our program's collaborative and inclusive culture.
	SCSHA Jennifer Mungo Student of the Year Award: Celine Benedico	Among Celine Benedico's noteworthy qualities is her cheerful outlook that radiates through all of her interactions from the community to the clinic, to the lab, and to the classroom. As a student, Celine has been an active participant who interacts well with other students.  A clinical supervisor noted that "Celine is thoughtful, hardworking, and unshakable in therapy! She is positive and always eager for suggestions to improve her skills. She adjusts quickly to her client's needs and behaviors to provide effective therapy and preserve the integrity of the data she collects. She takes the time to understand the reason behind testing and treatment. Celine is detail-orientated and eager to learn. Celine worked quite well with pediatric clients during an intensive summer semester, including addressing the needs of one client who presented some challenges." In her research lab, Celine contributes to a wide range of activities. Her research activities overlap with community service such as leading a book club for older adults and a mindful walking program for older adults at risk for dementia. She is professional and thorough in all that she undertakes. The duties that I have assigned to her fall into four categories. One is initiation of data collection, a second is data collection, a third is data analysis, and a fourth category related to dissemination of research (publication and presentation). Celine is a responsible student clinician who is committed to the profession and will be an outstanding clinician in whatever setting she chooses for her career.
	USC- Center for Teaching Excellence, Outstanding Teaching Award for Graduate Instructors: Taylor Berrier	Taylor Berrier is a doctoral candidate in COMD in the South Carolina Research on Language and Literacy Lab. Prior to returning for her Ph.D., she worked in the pediatric private practice setting where she specialized in treating reading and language disorders. Her research interests focus on socioemotional factors related to developmental language disorder (DLD) and dyslexia, and she was awarded an NIH F31 fellowship for her dissertation studying emotion regulation in children with developmental language disorder. Taylor has enjoyed teaching courses for the COMD department, including School-Age Language and Literacy Disorders as well as Language Theory and Phonetics.
	International Society for Autism Research. Student Travel Award: Moji Norozi	Mojtaba Norozi completed his B.S. and M.S. programs in Speech and Language Pathology in Iran and spent three years working with children with neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly autistic children, in clinical settings. As a Ph.D. student in the CANDi Lab, he is interested in exploring the physiological characteristics of autistic children and children with Fragile X Syndrome, and how these factors relate to their emotional regulation and communication skills. He received the Student Travel Award from the International Society for Autism Research to present his research at the INSAR 2025 conference in Seattle.
	Graduate Student Scholar in Aging: Cara Vandergriff	Cara Vandergriff, MA, MS, CCC-SLP is a PhD candidate in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina. She holds a Master of Arts in Writing and Linguistics from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (2013) and a Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology from Western Kentucky University (2018). After obtaining the Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology (CCC-SLP), Cara gained over 5 years of experience working as a medical SLP across a range of sub-acute settings in her home state of Tennessee, as well as in Georgia and Oregon. Cara's clinical interest in techniques and tools to promote independence and connection among clients with cognitive-linguistic disorders intersects with current research projects in the Arnold School of Public Health's Aging Gracefully Lab, under the direction of ASHA Fellow Dr. Jean Neils-Strunjas. These include inquiries into optimizing health literacy, building age-distributed networks, and enhancing evidence-based interventions for individuals with neurocognitive disorders. When not in the lab or classroom, Cara can often be found at the Lourie Senior Resource Center, where she volunteers as a line dance instructor. An avid fly angler, she also enjoys fishing the rivers of Southern Appalachia in her free time.
	SCSHA Award Winning Poster: Genna Cunningham	Genna Cunningham's interest in the SLP field dates back to high school and undergraduate shadowing experiences in school, private practice, and outpatient ENT settings. Upon receiving her undergraduate degree in Psychology (B.A.) with a minor in Spanish, she was eager to begin her graduate training through USC's Residential MS-SLP program. Genna's practicum experiences included rotations with pediatric and adult populations in the university-based clinic, middle school, inpatient hospital, and outpatient clinic settings. Genna's experiences were augmented by participation in research with the LDDL lab led by Dr. Lisa Fitton into bilingual literacy and a later award-winning poster presentation at the 2025 SCSHA convention with co-authors Amelia Mudd, Dr. Angela McLeod, and Laura Heidenreich into Parkinson's-related outcome measures associated with the SPEAKOUT! program. After completing her final internship with Prisma Greenville Memorial Hospital Acute Therapy and Prisma ENT this summer, Genna plans to continue working in the Upstate with adults in the medical setting.
	SCSHA Award Winning Poster: Amelia Mudd	Amelia Mudd received her bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky before coming to the University of South Carolina to pursue her master's degree. During her time at USC she has developed an interest in treating patients across all ages and particularly working with pediatric myofunctional disorders. Amelia was part of the partnership that won the South Carolina Speech Language Hearing Association's poster presentation at the annual conference this year. Her presentation focused on the importance of patient-centered care for individuals with voice disorders due to Parkinson's Disease.
	Max Planck Institute (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), Otto Hanh Medal:  Laura Giglio	Laura Giglio is a postdoctoral fellow in the Aphasia Lab. Laura completed a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow, UK, followed by a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She earned her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, in affiliation with the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, where she investigated the brain networks for sentence production and comprehension, for which she was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal. In the Aphasia Lab at USC, she now focuses on language processing after stroke.
	International Society for Autism Research. Early Career Travel Award and National Fragile X Foundation. Junior Investigator Award: Dr. Kimaya Sarmukadam	Dr. Kimaya Sarmukadam is a postdoctoral fellow in the Communication in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (CANDi) Lab, where she supports ongoing research examining the socio-emotional development in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), such as autism spectrum disorder and fragile X syndrome. Broadly, her research interests include using neurobehavioral methods, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and semi-naturalistic observation, to explore how differences in sensory processing contribute to anxiety and impact adaptive functioning in individuals with NDDs across the lifespan.
	NIDCD Research Symposium in Clinical Aphasiology Fellowship to attend Clinical Aphasiology Conference in 2025: Zeinab Khoshhal Mollasaraei	Zeinab Khoshhal Mollasaraei is a PhD student in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, where she conducts research in the Neurosyntax Lab. Originally from Iran, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in speech therapy and gained over 12 years of clinical experience as a speech-language pathologist. Before beginning her PhD, she also served as an instructor at one of Iran's leading universities. Zeinab's research focuses on sentence-level deficits in aphasia, combining behavioral testing and neuroimaging methods with the goal of advancing aphasia rehabilitation. As part of her dissertation, she is developing and validating the Animated Sentence Production Test, a novel assessment designed to evaluate grammatical impairments in individuals with aphasia.
	Elaine M Frank Fellowship: Marren Brooks	Marren Brooks is a clinically certified Speech-language pathologist, who completed her Master's degree at Purdue University.  She has received the  competitive ASHA SPARC award for new researchers. She has developed a promising, programmatic line of research, and has presented her research at the American Speech-Language Hearing Association Conference. Ms. Brooks has maintained a 4.0 GPA while completing multiple projects within her lab, teaching multiple MS courses, and passing her comprehensive exams to become a doctoral candidate. She was awarded the Elaine M. Frank Doctoral Fellowship to support the completion of her doctoral degree.