Grants>Communication Sciences and Disorders

Autism Speaks Request for Applications: 2012 Baker Summer Camp Grant Cycle

March 5 - Deadline for applications at midnight EST

Program Funding

Autism Speaks Baker Summer Camp Program will select eligible camps to identify scholarship campers and offers up to $5,000 in scholarship funds for campers with Autism Spectrum Disorder to attend a summer camp.

Request for Application

Camp Scholarship Fund applications must be submitted electronically using the Autism Speaks Online Grant System. Applications that are late, incomplete, or do not adhere to the required format will not be reviewed.

Camp Eligibility

All Camps providing a summer camp program to financially disadvantaged individuals with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder are eligible to apply for a Camp Scholarship Fund through the Autism Speaks Baker Summer Camp Program.

Scholarship Camper

Camps selected to participate in the Camp Scholarship Fund are responsible for selecting Scholarship Campers. A Scholarship Camper has: 1) a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2) is financially disadvantaged, and 3) through camp participation has the opportunity for individual growth and development.

Final Evaluation Report

Selected Camps will provide a detailed accounting of the Camp Scholarship Fund. Camper and family evaluation of the Scholarship Camper's experience is provided to Autism Speaks.

Review Committee

Autism Speaks recruits members for the Autism Speaks' Baker Summer Camp Program Review Committee. The national committee will be composed of families affected by autism, individuals with autism, and autism professionals. The Committee reviews eligible applications and selects camps to receive a Camp Scholarship Fund.

The Review Committee reviews and ranks applications based on the following criteria:

1. Overall camp program design and available activities
2. Approach to serving individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
3. Camp offers a wide ranger of opportunities for inclusion of campers with autism with age-appropriate peers
4. Location of the camp is readily accessible to underserved communities
5. Camp staff is provided with training in Autism Spectrum Disorders
6. Camp administration has a clear, fair, and easily documented process for selecting Scholarship Campers
7. The Camp has matching funds available for the 2012 Camp Scholarship fund.

Camps will be reviewed based on the information presented in the online application.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of Interest include but are not limited to a pre-existing relationship between a Camp and a Member of the Review Committee. All conflicts must be declared at the beginning of the process. Anyone with a conflict of interest is not permitted to review the declared application.

All recommendations made by the Review Committee are based on information presented in the online application.

Camps We Have Funded

Since 2010, Autism Speaks has awarded scholarships to more than 630 campers at 99 camps across the country through the Autism Speaks Baker Summer Camp Scholarship Program. All camps in the U.S. that provide a summer program to financially disadvantaged individuals with autism were eligible to apply.

Autism Speaks encourages individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder to contact local camp organizations in order to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

Autism Speaks Request for Applications: Treatment Research Grants: Full- and Pilot-Level 2012 Cycle

Letter of Intent due: February 23, 2012, 8:00 PM Eastern

Autism Speaks invites both Full- and Pilot-Level Treatment research grant applications to conduct innovative clinical studies of novel interventions for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) throughout the lifespan. These may include medical approaches including complementary and alternative forms of health care and pharmacological treatments, as well as behavioral and/or psychosocial interventions, and evaluation of the efficacy, safety or therapeutic benefits of all types of interventions. Also appropriate are animal model studies that test the effects of novel compounds for reducing autism symptoms.

For all RFAs, Autism Speaks is focusing on a set of targeted research priorities for 2012. All treatment study projects will be required to demonstrate direct relevance to at least one of these targeted research priorities:

1. Understand environmental risk factors and their interaction with genetic susceptibility to enable prevention and improve diagnosis and treatment

2. Discover biomarkers that can improve risk assessment and subtype stratification that will allow for an individualized approach to treatment

3. Improve quality of life through more effective medicines, behavioral interventions, and technologies

4. Enhance diagnosis and treatment of underserved and under-studied populations, specifically,

• Nonverbal persons with ASD
• Ethnically-diverse and/or low resource communities
• Adults
• Those with medical co-morbidities

5. Disseminate and implement evidence-based clinical practices to the broader community worldwide

IMPORTANT: The relevance of the proposed research to ASD and Autism Speaks’ research priority areas must be explicitly described in the Letter of Intent (LOI) and full application.

Awards
Autism Speaks will make a limited number of treatment research grants determined by the available financial resources.

Full-level research grant
1-3 years
$150,000/year maximum

Pilot-level research grant
1-2 years
$60,000/year maximum

Autism Speaks utilizes a web-based application system for their grant submissions. All applications must be submitted through this system. It is imperative to indicate whether the submission is for the Full- or Pilot-Level Treatment research option.

Research Inquiries
research@autismspeaks.org

Communicative Disorders Scholarship

Sertoma’s annual Communicative Disorders Scholarship Program, funded by the Sertoma Annual Fund, is for graduate students pursing advanced degrees in audiology or speech-language pathology from institutions in the U.S. These scholarships, worth $1,000 each, are awarded in the spring to help offset the cost of tuition, books and fees incurred during the following school year. Sertoma’s Communicative Disorders Scholarships Program provides more funds nationally for graduate level study in communicative disorders than any other single organization.

Academic Year 2012-2013

Deadline: March 30, 2012

Scholarship Program
$1,000 scholarship to cover tuition, books and supplies. The funds may be used for any term, including the summer term, during the awarded academic school year. Support from Sertoma provides the funding for the scholarships.

Qualifications
• Must be a citizen of the United States of America.
• Must be accepted into a graduate level program in speech language pathology and/or audiology at a college or university in the United States, accredited by ASHA’s Council on Academic Accreditation.
• Must have a minimum cumulative 3.2 on a 4.0 scale for all undergraduate and graduate level course work. Include the fall semester 2011 in your calculations.
• Must submit application and all required materials in single envelope by deadline date.

Deadlines
All scholarship applications and requested materials must be received at Sertoma Headquarters by 4:00 pm Central Time on March 30th each year. If the deadline falls on a weekend, the following Monday will be used as the deadline date. Sertoma will acknowledge receipt of applications by e-mail only. If you would like notification include your e-mail address on the application. We will not notify or acknowledge receipt of application by phone. Faxes are not accepted.

Notification to Recipients
All scholarship recipients will be notified by the end of June each year. We cannot send out lists of recipients to those who do not receive a scholarship. We only notify recipients, no notification means the student did not receive the scholarship.

Sertoma Headquarters
Attn: Communicative Disorders Scholarship
1912 E. Meyer Blvd.
Kansas City, MO 64132

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Student Ethics Essay Award

ASHA is pleased to announce the seventh annual Student Ethics Essay Award (SEEA) competition. This program is conducted as part of ASHA's efforts to enhance ethics education activities. The SEEA is designed to provide opportunities for NSSLHA members who are undergraduate or graduate students in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) to think about ethical decision making as they prepare to start careers in audiology, speech-language pathology, or speech, language, and hearing sciences. The goal of the SEEA is to create greater awareness of situations individuals in CSD careers may encounter that could pose ethical dilemmas and options for addressing these dilemmas.

Students will write an essay on the ethics topic shown below and submit it to their NSSLHA Chapter Advisor for initial review. NSSLHA members who are not affiliated with a specific NSSLHA chapter may submit their entries to their Regional Councilors. Each NSSLHA chapter/Regional Councilor may select up to five student essays for submission to ASHA for the final review and selection process.

Members of ASHA's Board of Ethics will review the entries and select the three winning essays. Monetary prizes (dollar amounts to be determined later) and certificates will be awarded to the writers of the top three essays. Any or all of the winning essays may be published on the ASHA and/or NSSLHA website, in The ASHA Leader, and/or in other ASHA/NSSLHA publications.

Award Eligibility

* Individuals must be a member of a local NSSLHA chapter or a member of the national NSSLHA organization. (Note: Only NSSLHA chapters in good standing with the Association are eligible to submit a member student's essay. NSSLHA chapters may recertify online with the national office.
* Individuals must be enrolled part time or full time during the 2011–2012 academic year in an undergraduate or graduate-level CSD program.
* Graduate students must be enrolled in a program currently accredited (or in Candidacy status) by the Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology.

2012 Essay Topic

Drawing upon ASHA's Code of Ethics, relevant Issues in Ethics Statements, and other resources, students will write an essay on the following topic: Persons in our professions are as likely as anyone else to suffer from mental illnesses of varying degrees of severity or to suffer from various forms of addiction and substance abuse. The term "impaired practitioner" is widely used to refer to professionals when such illnesses and addictions adversely affect their ability to carry out their responsibilities. Write an essay in which you consider the ethical issues raised by the problem of impaired professionals, giving attention to such questions as the following:

* What ethical responsibilities does the professional have in dealing with his or her own impairment, particularly when it may adversely affect his/her clinical, administrative, supervisory, teaching, research, and/or business practices in the professions of communication sciences and disorders?
* What ethical responsibilities do the colleagues, supervisors, and employers of an impaired professional have?
* What responsibilities should ASHA have in this area and why?
* When the impaired practitioner/researcher falsifies charges for services, misrepresents information in reports or research, abandons patients, fails to document treatment, or violates the Code of Ethics in other ways, should their impairment have a bearing on the findings of the Board of Ethics; and if so, what should that be?

Student Deadline: Students must submit their completed application forms and essays to their NSSLHA Chapter Advisor or Regional Councilor by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 13, 2012. The essay must also be e-mailed as an MS Word document attachment to your Chapter Advisor/Regional Councilor by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 13, 2012.

NSSLHA Chapter Advisor/Regional Councilor Deadline: The NSSLHA Chapter Advisor/Regional Councilor must submit the completed and signed application form(s) and essay(s) to ASHA by mail postmarked by midnight on Friday, April 20, 2012. The essay(s) must also be e-mailed as an MS Word document attachment to ethics@asha.org no later than midnight on Friday, April 20, 2012.

Authors of winning essays and their Chapter Advisors/Regional Councilors will be notified in early June 2012.

Contact ASHA's Ethics Team at ethics@asha.org if you need additional information.