Carol Gaebler is March Gold U recipient

Carol Gaebler is dancing as fast as she can.

As associate director of clinical services for speech pathology at the Munroe-Meyer Institute, Gaebler — the Gold U winner for March — takes part in every aspect of the UNMC mission — education, clinical services and research.

Her 25-year career at UNMC can be laid at the feet — or knee — of fortune. As a fine arts major in vocal performance and dance, Gaebler was a year into her studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln when a knee injury derailed that career. In the wake of the injury, some of her classmates tried to cheer her up — and recruit her — by inviting her to watch their speech therapy sessions at the Barkley Speech Language-Hearing Clinic. Most of her credits would transfer, they pointed out.

Gaebler went to watch. And then went back again and again. She’d found a new vocation.

“I just fell in love with it,” she said. “Every day is a different challenge – it’s the excitement of wondering ‘What’s going to be thrust upon me today?'”

That love is evident to her co-workers.

“Carol never tires of ensuring we are providing extraordinary care,” said Amy Nordness, director of the speech language pathology department at MMI, who nominated Gaebler. “She is a master clinician and continuously seeks opportunities to share her knowledge and train the next generation of speech language pathologists . . . She is always searching for a way to educate others for the benefit of her patients.”

Gaebler says to be successful in the speech field, you have to be “a process person.” Comparing it to her husband’s work as a certified public accountant, she noted that he likes to see a finished product.

“We never get to see the finished product,” she said. “Our patients are in acute care, and then they go to acute rehab or outpatient therapy or maybe skilled nursing. So sometimes we don’t get to find out what the end of the story is.”

But the joy of the work is the chance to interact with people in a moment of crisis, she said.

“In the moment of a diagnosis, a head injury, a stroke, we can assure them it’s going to be better,” she said. “We’ll give them a way to communicate. They’re going to swallow. There’s a lot of fulfillment in meeting people at that moment and helping them over those hurdles.”