BBS Masters Program Series: Human Development and Early Childhood Disorders

Hi, welcome to BBS Mindful Minutes. My name is Anisha, and my name is Brandon. Today we are wrapping up our BBS Master's program series. We sit down with Dr. Meredith Grant, Head of the Human Development and Early Childhood Disorders graduate program, to discuss what the program has to offer, how to apply, and what career opportunities are available with the HDCD degree. Now let's get started. Thank you so much, Dr. Grant, for being on the podcast. Can you give us a brief introduction of yourself? Hi, I'm Meredith Grant. I'm the program head for HDCD, which is the Human Development and Early Childhood Master's degree program. And for the CLDB program, which is the Child Learning and Development Undergraduate Program. And I'm an associate professor of instruction at UTD. I teach courses in those areas, too. Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. So we're going to start off with the question of what requirements do student need to apply to the master's program and when they should apply by. Well, applicants need to provide an application online through UTD admissions. That includes transcripts, three letters of recommendation, a CV, and a great statement of purpose. So the statement of purpose should be a short essay that briefly describes the reasons for pursuing this graduate degree. So that would be things like relevant professional experience and scholarly experiences. And also their future professional goals that are in line with our program. Because the HDCD program is pretty unique at UTD. It prepares students to work with really young infants and young children. So generally ages zero to five. So we're looking for applicants that have a degree in child development or in something related to that, like speech language pathology or psychology. And they should have specific interest in working with those really young children as opposed to older children. We start new students in the program only in fall semester. So not in summer. You can't start in summer and you can't start in spring in this program. So we have rolling admissions. The priority application deadline is February 15th when we take the bulk of applications. And then we continue reviewing applications on a rolling basis until May 1st. And so once a student gets applies to the program, gets accepted and gets through the wonderful program, what type of career options are people with a master's degree in human development and early childhood disorders looking at? That's a really great question. It's a really versatile degree. And that graduating students can follow professional pathways in a variety of directions. Those pathways are working with children and their families to develop supportive relationships and to, you know, really empower caregivers to be able to advocate for their children. So they are often working with lots of other disciplines like occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, physical therapists. And the role of somebody from our program usually is including, you know, assessing, developing intervention plans and then accessing all of those resources. So some of the job titles that are connected to that set of that particular set of skills, it's kind of the same set of skills, but just in different contexts. So then the job titles change. But some of those are things like developmental specialists. And those are people who work usually in like daycares or preschools, and they're assessing kids assessing their needs and where then how we might intervene to best serve them. There are special service specialists. Those are SSS. So they work with kids in places like Head Starts, where they're trying to like the first stop for somebody, a child that is maybe developing atypically, helping them to find services. And they help also to implement individualized education plans. Most of you have heard of those as IEPs. So they're helping to design and then also implement those with really young kids. There are also job titles like Early Intervention Specialists and Specialized Skills Trainers. So EIS or SSTs. And they provide developmental services to some of the biggest providers of those in our area are Medicare services in the Warren Center. And some of our internship and practicums are also connected at those sites. Then students sometimes they'll go on to be like preschool teachers or preschool directors. They also go on to graduate to get doctoral degrees. Well, that's amazing. I mean, the amount of her options are very diverse, but all of them are so noble because kids are a future. So it's really cool to have that program here at UTD. So now that we've kind of covered the careers that are available once students would acquire this degree, how does graduate course work compared to what students experienced while earning their undergraduate degree? Let's see. The program requires 39 graduate course hours in total. So 21 of those hours are core courses. Nine of those hours are approved electives. And then nine of those hours are actually practicum and internship opportunities in applied settings. So that's the first major differences. Some of your courses are classes, but then you also have these really applied opportunities that are all over the community, helping you develop your professional relationships that also help you get jobs that that's supportive. In the program, students follow a pretty specific degree program in that the timelines pretty specific for coursework, taking most of their classes, their core classes their first year and then engaging in practicum and internship later on. And a full time graduate course load is generally considered to be just three classes. So not the four or five that you might see at the graduate level. So that's nine hours spent in the classroom, but usually about triple that spent outside of the classroom. Part of that is because the dynamics of the classroom experience are so very different that the expectations are a little bit different. The classes are much smaller. And there's less emphasis on things like multiple choice tests or reading assignments. And it's more about coming prepared to discuss the work or apply the work in different ways, writing or creating assessment plans, some of the courses involved going in and assessing children actually implementing the assessment in the community and learning how to do that process or how to develop the intervention plan like that's actually built into some of the courses. And during the first year, students are often also required to attend professional development meetings. So that's in addition to their class requirements. And in those professional development meetings, we discuss program requirements and professional issues. We help students develop their curriculum leaders. We try to create a sense of belonging. We bring in alumni and other professionals from the field so that students can help, you know, have to help students start developing those really important connections that are just really especially important for the early childhood intervention career because you're often tasked with accessing resources. So it's different. It's different from the undergraduate. For undergraduates who are interested in this field and they kind of want to start to get a taste of those discussions that hand us on experience and overall a deeper depth, if you will, of the subject. Is there a fast track program offered? Yes, we do. How can students apply? Sure. So to apply for the fast track program, usually during your junior year, you should go see BBS advisors, and they will check to make sure that you have all of the core classes that you need. So that's going to be the state required core competency courses as well as a certain number of hours in your major. And then if that's all OK, they will refer you to our academic support coordinator, who's Kristi Noo, and she helps. But the process looks really, really similar to the standard application process. It's just a couple of extra forms. But there are some really great advantages to the fast track program. So instead of getting your undergraduate degree in four years, and then your graduate degree in two years, you get it all done in five years. There's a lot of cost saving involved as well, because you get to take graduate courses at the undergraduate course rate. And then you can, yeah. So it's, it's also demanding, right? That's a lot to take on, but it's a really awesome option overall. That seems a great option for students to consider, especially when, you know, money isn't the most accessible, you know, because, you know, it's beyond as college is very expensive. And it's, this is a great investment, definitely if students want to get into the field of a childhood, early disorders or anything like that. So it's amazing. And I'm really glad that's offered the BDS. So, so one last question, it's kind of a fun question we like to ask at the end of the series. But what is your favorite thing that this program has to offer, in your opinion? It is both a really, really hard question and a not as hard question if I really get down to it, right? You know, from birth to age five, a child's brain develops more rapidly than at any other time in life. So, and on top of that infants and very young children, they're like, they're ready and eager and excited to learn. So we have so much opportunity to make a huge impact on the quality of kids life at that age, to, you know, really open up their world is also a time in which that if things are going in an atypical way, that we have the most room to start interventions and that make the most where there's the most potential for change to make a child's life significantly better and to make the family's life significantly better as well. And our program is helping students to learn the tools to do that, to recognize those processes, to intervene, to access all the resources that a family might need. They're preparing students to engage in such an important mission in a really hands on way that's just so needed to promote healthy child development. That's wonderful. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show or the podcast and letting us know what the program has to offer and your favorite things and all those extra things. So how can students contact you or the department if they have any other questions? So the easiest way to get information about us is to jump onto the website, right on the U2D website and then you search for the HDCD Masters program. They're also welcome to contact either Kristi Nell or myself directly. So our contact information is there, but email is the best way to reach us. Thank you again, Dr. Graham, for providing information about the HDCD graduate program. To students who are interested in applying, we highly encourage you to visit the website linked in the description. This episode has been brought to you by the U2D School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. If you enjoy this episode, subscribe and share with those who would find it helpful as well. Please fill out our survey in the description for episode suggestions or feedback. And thank you for listening!