Natalie Rodriguez | staff writer

For fourth-year speech-language pathology student Alyssa Warholic, Fisher Hall isn’t just another academic building. She said it represents giving a voice to those struggling with words.

“Sometimes my clients know what they want to say, but they just can’t say it,” Warholic said. “When parents hear their kids say, ‘I love you’ for the first time. It feels like the core of being human.”

Warholic spends her Wednesdays and Fridays running sessions in the Adult Neurogenic Communication & Cognition Clinic, part of Duquesne’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic.

Established in 1998, the clinic serves people across the greater Pittsburgh area who have problems communicating. In addition to working with Duquesne students, clients at the clinic work with state licensed and nationally certified faculty practitioners. The clinical instructors directly supervise students and are responsible for services provided.

“It basically functions like an outpatient private practice,” Warholic said. “Clients are referred in many different ways, and they either pay or use Medicare or Medicaid. For my client, he was in the military, so a CI [clinical instructor] has to be in the room.”

The Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic houses seven specialty clinics; the Adult Neurogenic Communication & Cognition Clinic, the Audiology Clinic, the DU-PHAGIA Clinic, Language Disorders and Autism Clinic, the Speech Production Clinic, the Stuttering Clinic and the Voice and Upper Airway Clinic.

As part of his 2026 inauguration ceremony, Duquesne President David Dausey emphasized recognizing students of all disciplines as they experience community at Duquesne.

To build the community, the university lists 44 centers and institutes on their website – all with a mission to promote cross-discipline learning, instructional support, research programs, forums and community services, according to the website.

For students in the Rangos School of Health Sciences, like Warholic, participation in one of the clinics is a graduation requirement. Warholic believes that it has allowed for her to build relationships with her faculty advisers and gain invaluable career experience.

“All the professors, the clinical instructors, they’re very great,” Warholic said. “I feel like they’re all working towards that same goal of helping us be better clinicians.”

Each clinic and service on campus provides a different role for the populations they serve. While some are available for students of all majors, others are exclusively designed for an academic program.

The Reading Clinic, located in Canevin Hall, is a non-profit educational service through the School of Education that has been helping children and parents since 1964, according to the clinic’s website.

Carla Meyer, director for the Reading clinic, said that she wants students in the master’s program to learn how to work with students beyond a textbook.

“I want my students to take away that if there’s a child being difficult, there’s a reason,” Meyer said. “There’s always an underlying reason. Maybe it’s because they’ve had such a bad experience with reading, and it can be embarrassing to not know how to read.”

The clinic is broken down into two parts. The first is the Teaching Clinic for Duquesne students in the Reading Literacy Education master’s program. The second is the Peer Structure Literacy Clinic to help students struggling with dyslexia.

For the Fall 2026 semester, the clinic will host 35 children for the Teaching Clinic and seven children for the specialized program.

The clinic includes a writing room where they can practice their reading and writing skills.

Across campus, Duquesne’s Mary Pappert School of Music houses a clinic of its own.

The City Music Center provides lessons to students, faculty and staff members at Duquesne while also teaching music lessons for anyone in the greater Pittsburgh Area.

Alayna Steinmetz, senior music therapy student, believes that working with her community through her practicum has allowed for her to better connect with her studies.

“Working with different populations has really set me up for success going into my internship next year,” Steinmetz said. “It’s so rewarding saying ‘I’ve done all these things,’ but it also feels good and has made me a better person for it.”

Steinmetz is working with a hospice center and sees different clients every week. She uses music to work on skills like alertness for dementia patients by playing songs on various instruments to track the patient’s response.

The City Music Center also hosts a variety of community events. One of their largest annual events, Full Spectrum, invites members of the public to create music for people of all skill levels and abilities.

“This is what it’s like to be on the real world stage,” said Thomas Carsecka, director of the City Music Center. “Helping other people in a real way, making an impact in an authentic way. Not like, ‘Oh, I wrote a paper about what would be,’ those are all theoretical and this is real.”

Natalie Rodriguez can be reached at rodriguezn2@duq.edu