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Speech-Language and Hearing Clinic

Saint Louis University's Paul C. Reinert, S.J., Speech-Language and Hearing Clinic has served the St. Louis community for over 50 years. It provides clinical services to people with speech, language or hearing problems.

Interior view of a waiting room with chairs and plants. A large sign with the SLU logo and the words "Paul C. Reinert Speech Language and Hearing Clinic" hangs above the reception window.

The clinic operates as a no-fee clinic, allowing us to serve a wide range of clientele who may otherwise not have the resources to afford assessment or treatment. The clinic operates thanks, in part, to donations from the public.

Support the Paul C. Reinert Speech-Language and Hearing Clinic

Through services such as comprehensive evaluation and treatment, communication sciences and disorders students gain experience with hands-on therapeutic techniques via supervised learning experiences.

Graduate students working toward master's degrees in speech-language pathology may provide clinical services under the supervision of certified, licensed faculty members at SLU.

The clinic has five components: speech and language, audiology, early childhood language and literacy, aural rehabilitation and community outreach.

Speech and Language Clinic

Diagnostic and treatment services include:

  • Articulation/phonology
  • Fluency/stuttering
  • Voice and swallowing
  • Social communication associated with Autism spectrum disorders
  • Language and literacy
  • Receptive and/or expressive language associated with developmental or acquired conditions
  • Accent or dialect modification/accent addition
  • Hearing aid evaluation and interventions
  • Speech and language consultations
  • Voice and communication training for transgender and gender non-binary individuals
Audiology Clinic

The audiology services include the following diagnostic services:

  • Diagnostic hearing evaluations
  • Hearing screening
  • Hearing aid evaluation
  • Hearing aid dispensing, repair and batter sales
  • Assistive listening devices
  • Pediatric and adult hearing evaluations
  • Immittance and otoacoustic emissions testing
  • Auditory brainstem response testing
  • Auditory processing evaluations
Aural Rehabilitation Clinic 

A program is designed to retrain the brain to recognize electrical sounds as opposed to previous acoustic sounds. It involves an intensive six to eight-week program for post-lingual patients. Importance is placed on understanding the abilities of familiar and non-familiar listeners. Additionally, family involvement is an integral part of the program and is highly encouraged and facilitated.

Services include:

  • Auditory training
  • Melodic intonation training for prosody
  • Conversation repair
  • Listening strategy training
  • Speech reading training
  • Visual cue training
  • Receptive-language-associated listening in background noise
The Early Childhood Language/Literacy Center

Saint Louis University’s Early Childhood Language/Literacy Center is a communication-based preschool program within the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. It serves young children ages 2.5 to 5 who present communication/language impairments. The program also provides graduate students with an excellent in-house clinical practicum opportunity.

A full-time CSD faculty member serves as the coordinator of the program and provides comprehensive clinical instruction for the graduate students. The curriculum and routine provide a learning environment that is interactive, social, language-and-literacy-rich and play-based. Children learn by doing, talking, listening and acting on objects in the context of meaningful social-communicative interactions with both children and adults.

Nutrition & Feeding Therapy Clinic

The Nutrition & Feeding Therapy Clinic is an interprofessional partnership between the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics at Saint Louis University. Graduate students from both departments partner together and receive clinical instruction from a dually credentialed speech pathologist and registered dietitian to diagnose and treat feeding disorders in children and adults.  

Diagnostic and treatment services provided for feeding disorders often address issues like the ones listed below: 

  • Food selectivity
  • Limited diet
  • Food/drink refusal
  • Nutritional deficiencies
  • Mealtime behavior problems
  • Food phobias
  • Feeding and swallowing disorders (dysphagia)
  • Oral-motor dysfunction
  • Chewing difficulties
  • Pediatric feeding disorder
  • Tube feeding dependence
  • Poor growth (failure to thrive)  

Please contact Martha Blaess, PhD, CCC-SLP, RDN, LD for questions related to feeding/nutrition concerns.  
Email: martha.blaess@health.slu.edu