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Clinical Instructor Lynn Boardman
Boardman Featured in Southern's Yearbook
Story: Jeffrey Guillot
Photos: Kimberly Adams
2009 Southern Miss Yearbook
5/5/09- Sitting with Lynn Boardman in her office on a Friday afternoon, she looks every bit the part of the director of the Southern Miss Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. It's easy to imagine her working passionately with graduate students, teaching classes, and organizing therapy sessions. She is dignified and professional.
So it's a bit harder to imagine her in her old line of work- as an athletic trainer, working on the sideline in the chaos of a football game. During her career as an atheletic trainer, Boardman interacted with a young man, a football player, with a speech impediment. The encounter spurred her to study speech-language pathology, and that calling resulted in one more thing that might be hard to imagine about Ms. Boardman, especially in a clinical setting. She brings her dog to work.
Top: Sarah Rouse and a child meet Sam. Bottom: Ms. Boardman introduces a youngster to Sam.
Most dogs wouldn't consider a day at a clinic to be a good time, but Sam isn't most dogs. This black Labrador Retriever is a trained therapy dog, registered with the American Kennel Club. "When he sees the clinic, he knows he's going to work," says Boardman. "He loves it." Sam has become a fixture within the clinic, and it's not uncommon to see him wandering through the offices, greeting students and staff alike as if he were just another member of the faculty.
Ms. Boardman, currently in her third year as director, came up with the idea of using Sam to calm patients and put them at ease. "I figured if you can use dogs to help in the treatment of the blind and deaf, why not use them with children? I brought him in one day, and he was a hit. "How much of a hit?"
Ms. Boardman recalls the case of a young girl with a severe speech problem. One of the only things the staff could discern, they thought, was the phrase "I want a dog." Enter Sam.
One year later, it's not an uncommon sight to see the same little girl walk over to the office, call Sam, and bring him to her therapy sessions. She speaks clearly now, and in complete sentences.
But none of this good work, Ms. Boardman says, would be possible with just her and Sam. She credits the superb quality of the Speech-Language Clinic students and staff for the success of the program, a program that provides amazing experiences to patients and gives help and hope to those who need it. "I'm surrounded by great people," she says. Great people, and a great dog.