2007 Annual Report

Gordon Krainen, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Vice-President for Membership

A Story of Numbers

          I hate stats.  Believe me I’ve had my share of courses on the subject.  Never quite got the knack for it.  But some say numbers tell stories.  Others say numbers lie.  You decide which is which.  What I’ll do here is look at some numbers.  Lets not do stats.  How about looking at trends.  That sounds more do-able right?  For starters, the total number of SLP’s and Audiologists that presently belong to MSHA is 1,464.  Not too shabby. However, if you consider that there are over 2,000 communication disorder professionals in our state who do not belong, then we are missing the mark.  And who are those members?  For starters, we are 92% female and 6% male.  I have no comment to make about that, except that maybe it would be nice to make that stat a little less skewed.  Comparing Speech to Audiology, we are 95% SLP’s and 5% Audiologists.  Where did all    the Audiologists go?  Going forward, by degrees:  91% of our members are master’s trained, 6% doctoral, and only 1% hold bachelor’s degrees.  Let’s look at work settings.  It is probably common knowledge that the majority of us work in the public schools (48%). In smaller numbers we work in hospitals (6%), rehab centers (4%), private practice (9%), and universities (5%).   The rest are students, are not working, or the information is not available.

            Talking about students, the numbers tell us something too.  To date we have 188 students, roughly 15% of the membership. At any given time, there are a lot more than that number in the undergrad and graduate programs.  It seems students are not taking advantage of what MSHA can offer them.  This is a trend that we should all strive to change, as the students are going to be our future.

            Any good statistician would say, once you have the numbers, you have to make them talk to you.  What can we glean from the data?  From this cursory review, we can extrapolate some trends.  Compared to the prior year, MSHA enrollment has remained fairly constant.  Considering that we want to grow, this is not a positive outcome. 

Considering the economy, the poor job market, cold climate etc., maybe staying constant could be considered a positive.  Regardless, there are too many professionals not associating themselves with MSHA, and that is a situation ripe for change. If we want to continue to grow as a profession, become more autonomous, and have our professional issues taken seriously, we have to tackle the problems as a strong cohesive group. That is where I make an appeal to you.  If you enjoy being a part of MSHA, then help us get the word out to your colleagues and friends.  When you become proactive in MSHA you are making an investment in your professional future.  That is a trend that is skewed in the right direction.