Assistant Teaching Professor
Email: jmdifferding@loyola.edu
Biography
Following my undergraduate education, I served for one year as a volunteer through FrancisCorps in San Jose, Costa Rica. Refining my Spanish, I worked in a school that served students with multiple disability as well as children who were deaf and hard-of-hearing, many of whom were receiving speech-language services. It was through this experience that I decided to enter the profession of speech-language pathology. Through clinical internships and externships, I found the crossroads between my desire to go to medical school and speech-language pathology and have spent my career as a medical speech-language pathologist in the inpatient, outpatient and acute rehab settings. I joined the Loyola Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Department in 2020 as an affiliate faculty and have come to thoroughly enjoy being in the classroom with the undergraduate population. Outside of the clinic and classroom, I enjoy spending time with my husband and our goldendoodle, baking, traveling, competing in triathlons, and drinking coffee.
Education
- MS (2015) in Speech-Language Pathology from Loyola University, Recipient of Bernard Saltysiak Award for Clinical Excellence
- Post-Baccalaureate (2013) in Communication Sciences and Disorders from The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
- BA (2010) in Communication with a minor in Spanish and Pre-Medicine concentration from St. John’s University (MN)
Areas of Specialization
Areas of clinical interests include dysphagia, speech, language and voice diagnostic and rehabilitation, with a specialty in head and neck cancer. Clinical experiences include adult inpatient, acute rehabilitation and outpatient settings at the Milton J. Dance Jr., Head and Neck Center at Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC), the Johns Hopkins Voice Center at GBMC and Mayo Clinic-Rochester.
Achievements (past 5 years)
2020 Richard Hirata Compassionate Caregiver Award-Milton J. Dance, Jr., Head and Neck Center and the Johns Hopkins Voice Center at GBMC
Presentations
- Messing, B., Ward, E. C., Ryniak, K., Kim, M., Silinonte, J., Differding, J., & Lazarus, C. (2017). A clinical pathway for swallowing services for patients with head and neck cancer: A service implementation evaluation. In Dysphagia Research Society Meeting. Poster presentation. Portland, OR: Dysphagia Research Society.