A profile of Colleen A. Haney, M.Ed., CCC/SLP
Colleen Haney is a speech language pathologist with over twenty five years experience as a clinician, administrator, consultant, trainer and university instructor.
For the past few years, Colleen has been working on a doctorate at Purdue University and providing consultation services for UCP of Greater Chicago. Presently she provides direct services for Early Intervention programs for UCP of Pennsylvania and she supervises therapists in the schools through ATC Health Care Services. Colleen has a vast background of service delivery models and transdiciplinary teaming experience making her a most able instructor for a program of this kind for all therapists and service providers in the medical, rehabilitation and educational fields.
Colleen has provided assistive technology and augmentative communication services to all ages of clients and across the range of disabilities. She was instrumental in the creation of the Pennsylvania Assistive Technology Center (PennTech), an international model of service delivery for AT and AAC and served as its director for several years. She has trained more than 1000 persons across the United States, Canada and Europe in AT and AAC techniques and strategies. She had created and produced many video training tapes on AAC and AT.
During the past few years Colleen has recognized the great need for service providers in the United States to become multiculturally aware to better meet the needs of our new growing multicultural population. To better prepare herself, Colleen has made a committment to learn Spanish and has made several extended trips to live with families in Latin American and study Spanish. During these visits she has continued to spread information about AT and AAC in Central America.
On one of her visits to Costa Rica she met Thorwald Westmaas, director of ILISA Language Institute. Colleen was impressed with the Spanish training program at ILISA and talked with Thorwald about a special Spanish program for AT and AAC service providers. Six months later, the curriculum was approved through the American Speech Language and Hearing Association.
In preparation for this program, Colleen has been working with universities, hospitals and government organizations in Costa Rica for the past year, to create opportunities for North Americans, Europeans and Latin Americans to share cultures and learn from each other.
In June 1996, the first Multicultural Applications of AAC training course took place. As a result of the tremendous interest, the scope of this annual course was opened to include professionals from other specialties within the field of rehabilitation.