Student spotlight: Tara Martin Shingleton

October 22, 2019

When looking for a place to continue her higher education journey, University of Montevallo graduate school student Tara Martin Shingleton was encouraged by how much the University’s faculty love what they do.

“When I did my interview with the grad school and talked with the professors about the program and everything it offered, the passion they had for it was obvious,” Shingleton said. “That’s when I knew I belonged.”

Shingleton is a second-year UM grad school student working toward her master’s degree in speech-language pathology. She recently got married, and said her husband’s support has helped greatly during her graduate school journey.

She will wrap up classes and take the Praxis test in December before completing a pair of eight-week externships in the spring – one focusing on working with children and another focusing on working with adults.

Once she completes the externships, she will graduate in May and move on to a clinical fellowship and then a career in the speech-language pathology field.

Because she was unsure which direction she wanted to take in the field upon starting graduate school, Shingleton said the small cohort sizes and wide range of experiences offered at UM have been highly beneficial.

“One of the big things that drew me in was that in our externship we go to two places. A lot of schools just do one externship placement. The variety of clinical experiences you get here is so broad, and I think that’s a really big advantage,” she said. “I didn’t know which direction I wanted to take in speech-language pathology, so it’s nice getting to have those different experiences.”