Meet Sydney Wilcox, an alumna of the UConn MA-SLP program! Sydney is currently a speech-language pathologist at CREC River Street Autism Program and the Early Learning Center at Birken.  

As a high schooler looking for potential careers, Sydney knew she wanted to work with kids in the related services or allied health fields (PT, OT, speech). After some research into each one and their undergraduate programs, she decided speech was for her! 

Her clinical interests involve servicing students with autism as well as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC; assessment, implementation, treatment and family support/training). Her favorite part of her job is building rapport with students and their families to help foster communication across environments. She expressed that she is lucky to have a small caseload (under 15 students) which allows her to be involved both directly in their speech and language services as well as be a key member on her students’ teams of special educators, behavior analysts, occupational therapists, physical therapists as well as family members! 

Sydney’s favorite part of grad school was that her cohort was a great support system and she learned so much from them. She also really valued her off-site clinical placements as she felt like she was able to put all of her schooling to use! 

Her advice to current grad students would be to take the time to build relationships with clinical educators as they have such a wealth of knowledge which helps you gain meaningful clinical experiences in the “real world.” 

A fun fact about Sydney is that her favorite food is mozzarella cheese!