In the middle of 2020, Christine Rose, a speech-language pathologist at Saint Louis University, met the mother of one of her young clients, Jamie Saunders. Saunders’ daughter is a person who stutters, and when she turned 14 years old, Saunders began to worry about what would happen when her daughter turned 16 and began driving or traveling by herself.
What would happen if she were stopped by police or needed to state her name at TSA? This was the start of Rose’s work to help protect individuals with a verbal disability in Missouri.
“It really started as a passion project through Jamie because she was very concerned about when her daughter would start to drive,” Rose said. “A person who stutters can get these blocks or these repetitions, or sometimes they break eye contact just because they don’t want to see the listener’s reaction when they’re stuttering.”
Originally, thinking she was going to go into the medical field working with individuals who have had a stroke or a head injury, Rose said she gained interest in the speech-pathology field while working at a head-injury center.
She recalled being shocked when she saw people around the same age as herself who had experienced traumas and were not able to explain how they were feeling because they had speech impairments. Rose said that speech has an immense impact on forming friendships and building careers.
“It’s just the basis for human connection, really, that communication piece,” Rose said. “After I left the head injury center, I went to work in schools and saw the impact that children [with speech impediments] face when struggling to communicate.”
Rose’s continued work with children and, later, adults at SLU’s speech-language and hearing clinic led to her initiative, along with Saunders, to find a way to protect individuals who have a verbal diversity. Rose mentioned that one of the main worries for these individuals is that they will be misconstrued as drunk or rude if they are ever pulled over by police.
After listening to the concerns of her clients and their parents, Rose began researching ways that these individuals could be better protected from punishment because of their inability to communicate. Initially, Rose looked if there was a law that could be created in Missouri.
After reaching out to a state representative and a lobbyist in the Missouri Speech Hearing Association, they decided that they could go through the DMV to add a speech impairment alert to the list of medical alerts that can be added to a Missouri driver’s license.
Rose’s leadership and collaboration have not gone unnoticed by her peers. Travis Threats, a professor and chair of the department of speech, language and hearing at SLU, has noticed her dedication to her clients and students. He mentioned a documentary that she sponsors titled “My Beautiful Stutter,” which brings awareness to individuals who stutter. He believes that it is a profound example of her leadership ability.
“This is what she’s a pioneer in, teaching people to accept their stuttering while still getting therapy for stuttering,” Threats said.
Outside of her advocacy efforts, Rose is also a graduate-school professor at SLU and a clinical instructor and speech pathologist at City Garden Montessori school. On the days she is working at the Montessori school, she brings a group of her graduate students along as they talk to language pathologists and help the students with social communication and receptive language.
One of Rose’s graduate students, Emma Carosone, is part of the group that goes to City Garden Montessori and has witnessed Rose’s teaching. She said she finds her to be a supportive and helpful instructor.
This semester, Carosone and her peers have been working with a group of students who had a developmental language delay. Carosone and their student group were brainstorming ways they could celebrate Developmental Language Delay Awareness Day, which was on Oct. 17, and Rose suggested that they create a video with the students. Taking her advice, they did just that. Now, Carosone said she and her peers are hoping to present that video at a national Speech Language Engineering Sciences Conference.
Rose’s advocacy and compassion have also come through in her lessons and interactions with clients, Carosone said.
“Something she has helped us learn is that [our sessions with a client] need to be patient focused,” Carosone said. “Not, what is their diagnosis, and what are typical things that you would do for that diagnosis, but what is your client like and focusing more on the client rather than the therapy techniques.”
Threats has similar feelings to Carosone — that Rose is a successful advocate and teacher for these individuals. She finds ways to make clients feel seen outside of their disability.
“Representing all communication disabilities, she models to our students, so that they learn we’re not in the perfecting people business,” Threats said. “We’re in the helping-them-do-what-they-want-to-do, their-speech-isn’t-holding-them-back business.”
Throughout her career, Rose has made it her mission to help those with verbal diversities feel accepted and protected. Whether that be through pioneering large-scale change with the Missouri licenses or the everyday impact she has on her students, she never stops advocating for others. This is not how she measures her success, however.
“Success, for me, would be that no one is discounted for their communication differences or underestimated,” Rose said. “It would be always assuming competence in the person no matter how they sound.”
