For more than 50 years, Saskatchewan’s Occupational Therapy and Speech Language Pathologist communities have advocated for a university program in our province that would educate and train students in these professions.

That dream will soon become a reality at the University of Saskatchewan.

You will meet Kara Broks and Tami Turner in this episode of YXE Underground. They are designing the province’s first Master’s program in Occupational Therapy and Speech Language Pathology and share with listeners why this work means so much to them.

For decades, if you were interested in becoming an Occupational Therapist or Speech Language Pathologist, you had to leave the province. That will change in September of 2026 when the University of Saskatchewan launches Master’s of Speech Language Pathology and Master’s of Occupational Therapy programs. Both of these programs will fall under the School of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Saskatchewan.

How these new Master’s programs will work together to meet the demand in our province is just one of the questions I had for Kara Broks and Tami Turner.

Kara is an SLP, creator and owner of the Speech Language Network business in Saskatoon, and is the Speech Language Pathology Implementation Coordinator with the UofS. She was also the third ever guest on this podcast in 2018.

Tami is an Occupational Therapist who has worked with universities across Canada developing OT programs and recruiting students and is the Occupational Therapist Implementation Coordinator with the UofS.

They have worked together for the past year building these new Master’s programs from scratch, with the help of many new colleagues, and are so excited for the positive impact it will have on people throughout Saskatchewan.

Kara and Tami are passionate about making a difference in our communities and I love how they have become dear friends through this process. You would never guess they didn’t know each-other until the university tasked them with creating two new Master’s programs.

I met with Kara and Tami last week in the University of Saskatchewan’s Health Sciences building to learn more about how all of this came to be and the impact their work is going to have in our communities.

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Cheers...Eric

• Host, Producer, Editor: Eric Anderson
• Theme Music: Andrew Dickson
• Website: https://www.yxeunderground.com
• Recorded: On Treaty 6 Territory and the traditional homeland of the Metis