LOGAN – Utah State University’s Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services is in a unique place in the pandemic.
The dean of the college, Beth Foley, said that is due to the services available through its two-year old Sorenson Center for Clinical Excellence, home to all the college’s clinical training programs.
”Clinical psychology, marriage and family therapy, speech pathology, audiology, financing,” Foley explained, “all kinds of different services (are available). We’ve been doing that for the two years the Sorenson Center has been open. But when the pandemic hit, we knew we had to change really quickly how we would deliver those services, because prior to this they were all delivered face-to-face.”
The Sorenson Center now provides all services from their clinics via Telehealth, allowing patrons to access the center’s services remotely.
This is Dr. Foley’s ninth year as Dean and her 26th year at USU. She oversees USU’s largest college, the top college of education and human services in Utah and one with a strong national ranking.
”But it’s the people in the college who are most impressive, how hard they work, the research that they are doing. But all of it is for the purpose of helping people. For improving the quality of life for people, especially in this community. And for really improving the quality of professionals that we send out into the world.”
Dr. Foley, a native of Boston, told her family when she took a USU faculty position in speech pathology in 1993 she would stay for a year in Logan. Now in her 26th year, she said she fell in love with Utah State University. She said she has had opportunities here she couldn’t imagine anywhere else.