Four Lamar University graduate students in Speech and Hearing Science and their faculty sponsor recently brought home top prize, at the annual Praxis Bowl, a competition for graduate speech pathology students hosted by the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Taking top honors were Mary Wyatt, Collin Brice, Stephanie Richings, and Johanna Figlia. They, and Assistant Professor Jamie Azios, their faculty sponsor, traveled to Houston to compete in Praxis Bowl.

“The competition was broadly focused on everything that one would expect a graduating speech-language pathology student to know. This includes professional knowledge, assessment of patients, treatment of patients, things like that. This also means that questions could have to do with any disorder in a speech pathologist’s scope of practice,” said Brice.

At the event, Lamar students competed against 15 other teams of speech pathology students from universities across Texas including Baylor University, Texas Christian University, the University of Texas, and Texas Tech. The competition included two rounds, in which eight teams competing, answering Jeopardy style multiple-choice questions. The team that won each round had the opportunity to move on in the competition.

“The winners from the first round and the second round then had to compete against each other. Whoever gained the most points in the final round were the winners,” said Richings. “It was funny because we ended up with a tie in the final round and they had to refer back to the initial rounds and see who had the most points. Thankfully, Lamar prevailed!”

Lamar’s victory at the Praxis’ Bowl this year was its first. The schools and programs Lamar competed against are prestigious, and for Lamar to have won speaks highly of the level to which Lamar’s speech pathology program prepares its students to go into practice in the real world, Azios said.

“We were so excited to have won the competition, as the hype surrounding the Praxis Bowl is surreal,” said Wyatt. “Graduate programs bring out foam fingers and wear customized shirts for this event, so it was definitely an honor to bring the trophy back to Lamar University!”