Susan Elling '82, '86

Susan Elling, MA SLP, CCC received her BA from CDSS in May of 1982 and her MA in December of 1986. During her studies at CU Susan was most interested in learning disabilities in children and traumatic brain injury in adults. “I really liked researching the neurology of learning, creativity and problem solving. Kind of fringe topics that only Doris Downey appreciated. :-) Thank goodness for Doris Downey and Lori Ramig. They kept me in grad school with their sharp intellect, humor, and encouragement for me to find my own way.” Susan caught us up on her career track after graduation: "I got hired right out of grad school at Boulder Community Hospital (BCH), and I'm still there. I was a fulltime staff speech therapist in Pediatric Rehab for 12 years (1986-1998) and got to do really whatever I wanted, as far as groups, camps, evaluations, which was wonderful. I worked with fantastic OT's and took a lot of continuing education in sensory integration my first 5 years out of grad school. I then started doing management on our multi-disciplinary OT, PT, ST team (1998-2007). In 2007 I was hired to be the Operations Manager for BCH's new outpatient cancer care center and I developed and now supervise the complementary care staff of acupuncturists, massage therapists, Reiki and healing touch nurses and registered dietitian for outpatient cancer patients in Boulder. It is a very sacred space of healing that has been created in the heart of Boulder and a perfect blending with my Buddhist meditation practice of now 30 years and my profession of 22 years. I love my job! It is all management and I am not clinical in this setting but I have my private practice of about 10 hours a week to keep my clinical skills up. I have had many opportunities through BCH to develop business management skills and I feel very lucky. I also got a certificate in website design through continuing education at CU and thought I would develop online curriculum but that hasn't panned out yet." Susan comments that she “still really likes processing disorders, learning style assessments, multiple intelligences, learning disabilities, gifted and twice exceptional kids and over the years have picked up a lot of information about local Boulder private and public schools to help parents make choices, and I've taken lots of continuing education in special ed law and Section 504 which has become a pretty hot topic." Susan is also is highly motivated by her “education advocacy work for families related to special education law and finding a good education fit for a particular learning style. I sit at a lot of IEP meetings and I love seeing the process work the way it is supposed to work, for the benefit of the child who cannot advocate for themselves yet.” She plans to “publish a manual for teachers on strategies to support different learning styles in their classroom. And live off the royalties. In Kauai.” Susan shared a few memories from her years at CDSS: • Sitting for hours on many Saturdays in 1985, pre Microsoft and Google and search engines, in Dennison Library at CU Health Sciences in Denver researching Neurogenics for Lori Ramig and spending $100.00 on making copies of journal articles at the copy machine. This was before computers were used for anything. We had to have 75 sources for our annotated bibliography. It was brutal but I learned a lot! • Being told that I was the only student ever working in the CLC that had "too much pause time" with my clients. (SLPs In Touch Web Curator & former CLC Director Cynthia (Cyndi) Gray '76 hopes that this didn't come from her and adds; “Can there ever be too much pause time?”) • We had a lot of fun on our evaluation teams especially when one of my classmates told a 23-year-old male client to "resist my tongue" instead of "resist the tongue depressor" during the oral peripheral exam. We were all screaming with laughter behind the mirror. • Becky Sweetman having me go "apply" for a marriage license with my 22-year-old stuttering client to put him in "communication pressure" to practice his maintenance skills. Socially Susan said she had to admit that "I was not a social butterfly during grad school. I was working almost full time the whole time in the warehouse of a local publishing company, packing books and driving a forklift, so I wouldn't have big loans. I would clock out to go to class and see my clients in the clinic. I didn't really have a social life. What I remember most was listening to my classmates who had taken out huge loans and were not working planning their nighttime ski trips to Keystone and Eldora. I had a nice small group of friends in Janet Beatty, Karen Bond, Chris Somma, Tami Cassel and a few others that saved my sanity many, many times.” I love everything about Boulder and continue to run, hike, bike, ski, go to the Farmer's Market, go to the Conference on World Affairs, concerts at Macky Auditorium, poke around the artist's Open Studios in the fall, and in general livin' the good life! I love to travel and would like to take at least 6 months and go around the world in the next 10 years and visit all the sacred places. You can read more about Susan’s work at Boulder Psychological Services and/or contact her by going to the following websites: http://www.boulderpsychologicalservices.com Susan's program, the Center for Integrative Care at BCH. http://www.bch.org/cancer-care-services/integrative-care.aspx Susan, best wishes to you and your family and congratulations on your obviously successful career!