JTC 26: A Full Circle Moment

After completing her undergraduate degree, Alice Cofield Collins did not have to go far to continue her education, and she would not have had it any other way.

The Oxford native earned her bachelor's degree in communication sciences and disorders from the University of Mississippi in 2024, then jumped right in the graduate program. In May, she completes her master’s degree with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average.

“Being able to continue my education in the place that raised me is more than a personal milestone,” she said. “Ole Miss has not only prepared me for my future, but it has also provided me opportunities to invest in the future of the people and place that made me who I am.”

Collins’ graduate clinical experience has taken her from the UM Speech and Hearing Clinic to Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi and Medical City Plano in Texas. Most recently, it took her to an elementary school in Anna, Texas, where she provides articulation, language and fluency therapy and works with students using augmentative and alternative communication devices.

As an undergraduate, she completed her thesis for the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College in the Laboratory for Stuttering: Science, Treatment and Advocacy Research under the direction of Gregory Snyder, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders.

“I have worked with Cofield both as her honors thesis mentor and as one of her professors in graduate school, and in both roles, she has impressed me in the same way,” Snyder said. “She absorbs complex material quickly and thoroughly, and she brings a quiet confidence to her work that does not announce itself until the results arrive.

“Time and again, she sets reasonable expectations and then exceeds them. That combination of intellectual horsepower and disciplined humility is uncommon at any level.”

After graduation, Collins plans to reside in Dallas and pursue a career as a speech-language pathologist in a school setting.

Top: Alice Cofield Collins, a communication sciences and disorders graduate student from Oxford, completes her master's degree in May after earning the university's highest academic honor as an undergraduate and maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA in graduate school. Photo by Srijita Chattopadhyay/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services

See more photos from Cofield Collins's Journey to Commencement