WYOSHA- 2024 CSAP Scholarship Winner Reflects on Its Impact

Howdy from Wyoming! 

As the current president of the Wyoming Speech-Language-Hearing Association (WyoSHA), I was fortunate to be selected as the 2024 Council for State Association Presidents (CSAP) travel award winner. As a smaller organization, our presidential trio (president, past president, president elect) is sometimes unable to travel to these conferences due to limited funds. The travel award provided me the opportunity to travel to Indianapolis without stretching our purse strings and allowed me to learn, connect, and present about our organization without the added stress and financial burden. 

The CSAP conference was a great opportunity for me to share the results of a survey of licensed Wyoming practitioners about the perceived benefits, or lack thereof, of WyoSHA membership. It was a important for me to be able to share this information as I also had the opportunity to learn about similar issues in other states. For my own learning, one of my favorite sessions was presented by AC Goldberg with The CREDITs Institute. AC spoke to us about inclusion in state organizations and in our work. The presentation was powerful, emotional, and incredibly important. The connections I made through the conference and the dissemination of my work were valuable for me as a state association president and would not have been possible without the travel award.

Unfortunately, though I was in Indianapolis, I was unable to attend the conference meetings and social events in-person. I greatly appreciated the hybrid conference this year since I was attending from my hotel room. Like those of you who did not get to attend the event, I was living my best life vicariously through the social media posts of the evening activities. Illness may have taken away my opportunity to network in-person and enjoy a baseball game (one of my FAVORITE summer activities), but I still felt fortunate to be in the proximity of greatness with other CSAP members. 

I cannot say thank you enough to the CSAP board for selecting my application and choosing WyoSHA as the travel award recipient for 2024. I look forward to continuing my work as president of WyoSHA because of this conference and to potential networking, researching, learning, and fun with other CSAP members in the future. 

With Gratitude,

Amy K. Peterson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

WyoSHA President 2024-2026