ASHA Clinical Fellowship Requirements: A Complete Checklist

The SLP Clinical Fellowship (CF) is the bridge between graduate school and full certification as a Certified Clinical Speech-Language Pathologist (CCC-SLP). It has several moving parts — hours, weeks, supervision, and formal evaluations — and missing any one of them can delay your certification.

Here's a complete checklist of what the ASHA Clinical Fellowship requires.

Before you begin

• Earn your graduate degree from a CAA-accredited program (or equivalent).
• Pass the Praxis exam in speech-language pathology.
• Secure a qualifying CF mentor — a clinician who holds the CCC-SLP and meets ASHA's mentor requirements.
• Confirm your position qualifies as mentored clinical experience.

The core experience requirements

• 1,260 clinical hours minimum.
• 36 weeks minimum of full-time experience (35+ hours/week).
• At least 80% of hours in direct clinical contact (assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and counseling).

Supervision and mentoring

• Your mentor completes the required supervisory activities across the fellowship — including direct observation of your clinical work and other monitoring activities (record review, conferences, evaluations).
• Supervision is distributed across the whole fellowship, not concentrated at the end.

The three segments

The CF is divided into three segments. At the end of each segment, you and your mentor complete a formal evaluation using the Clinical Fellowship Skills Inventory (CFSI):

• Segment 1 — early skill development; CFSI evaluation completed.
• Segment 2 — continued growth; CFSI evaluation completed.
• Segment 3 — final segment; CFSI evaluation shows you meet expected competency before completion.

Finishing up

• All segments rated as meeting or exceeding expectations on the final CFSI.
• Submit your CF report and certification application to ASHA.
• Keep copies of your hours logs, supervision records, and evaluations in case ASHA requests documentation.

Keep the whole checklist in one place

Tracking hours, weeks, supervision, and three separate segment evaluations across months of work is where most fellows slip. CFTrack keeps every item on this checklist in a single dashboard and flags where you're falling behind.

Verify before you rely on it

ASHA's CF requirements are detailed and subject to change. This checklist is an organizational aid, not official guidance — always confirm the current rules against ASHA's official Clinical Fellowship standards.