Candace Todd, MAS, MSSP
The Madeleva Award for Outstanding Graduate Student
May 18, 2024
This year’s recipient of the Madeleva Award is a student in the Dual Degree Program in Autism Studies and Speech Language Pathology.
During her time at Saint Mary’s, she has contributed a great deal of service to both the College and the wider community. She has led social skills groups for middle and high school students on the autism spectrum. She has helped to run Autism Training Workshops for the local community and for Saint Mary’s faculty and staff. And she has served as a mentor to two undergraduates in the College’s Mentoring Initiative for Neurodiverse Students.
During her nine semesters as a graduate student at Saint Mary's, this student has also earned a 4.0 GPA. She is the first student to accomplish that feat in the history of the Dual Degree Program.
One of her speech language pathology professors writes: “From the moment that [this student] entered the MSSP program, she distinguished herself as a superior student and clinician. . . . she is the type of student who works tirelessly for her clients. Despite being a novice clinician, her performance would lead one to believe she has been practicing for years. While her level of maturity and skill surpass the typical expectations for someone of her age and experience, her humility supersedes all of these skills. She is unaware of her exceptional qualities and how truly wonderful she is. She is respected by faculty as well as by her cohort and peers. What she seemingly does effortlessly in providing communication services to others, in actuality, is her hard work and intelligence converging to make one of the finest SLP students our department has had the pleasure of teaching and supervising.”
The director of the autism studies program writes: “in addition to her superlative academic performance and her extraordinary contributions to the College and the wider community, she is an uncommonly good person. She is selfless, kind, and hardworking. In short, she embodies all of the best traits we would hope for our students to possess.”
In recognition of her scholastic distinction and exceptional achievement, we are pleased to honor Candace Todd with the 2024 Madeleva Award.