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Purpose: The field of communication sciences and disorders (CSD) is among the least diverse health and education professions in the United States (Luther, 2017). Recruitment efforts have increased the presence of racial and/or ethnic minority students in CSD over the past decade, yet there has been no comparable increase in the membership of professional organizations, indicating a lack of retention. To understand academic-professional retention, we need to know more about the academic experiences of current students. Method: We performed semistructured qualitative interviews with 10 ethnic and/or racial minority clinical and PhD graduate students in CSD programs, focusing on the barriers and challenges they have faced, and the strategies they have developed to navigate their academic environments. Interviews were analyzed using consensual qualitative research procedures. Results: Almost all participants reported experiences of isolation, positive interactions outside the department, and learning to use self-help strategies. Typical themes also included negative interactions within the department (both in an academic and clinical context), and positive interactions primarily with minority peers. The strategies students reported were more varied than their experiences, and included socially focused strategies—for example, reaching out to minority faculty in other departments—as well as individually focused strategies—for example, keeping in mind the temporary nature of a difficult situation. Conclusion: Based on the results, we discuss new approaches and strategies that might help in improving the retention of minority students in CSD programs.

This article characterizes the aesthetic properties of English words. One thousand adult speakers of American English reported their favorite words and justified their selections. Each word was coded for phonological characteristics, valence, and frequency of occurrence and compared with words from a corpus of everyday English from Reader’s Digest. The participants’ stated reasons for their selections were categorized as utilitarian (meaning, use) or aesthetic (form). Compared to the word types in the Reader’s Digest corpus, the favorite words were longer and lower in frequency of occurrence. They were less likely to include a sonorant consonant but more likely to include a repeated consonant. Consonant clusters were sparser among the favorite words. The majority of people justified their favorite words on utilitarian grounds, suggesting some difficulty considering form apart from meaning. The best predictors of aesthetic justifications were lower valence, lower frequency, longer length, higher sonority, and a higher density of lax vowels. People value words for the work they do—the meanings they convey. Nevertheless, people can appreciate words as objects, and when they do, novelty and musicality are privileged. This study informs our understanding of the aesthetic function of language and situates that function into a broader consideration of aesthetic appreciation.