DETROIT — When Xiaoyun Shen's boss asked her to take an accent reduction class, she was a little flustered.

"I didn't know I had a problem," said Shen, a 43-year-old senior scientist at the biotech company Asterand Inc.

Shen's arsenal of degrees includes a medical degree and a master's degree from Chinese universities, a doctoral degree from a British university, and three post-doctorates from universities in Britain, Canada and the United States.

But when it came to communicating, the degrees lost some of their luster.

Colleagues and supervisors asked her to repeat repeatedly and strained to understand her.

At the conclusion of her first week of a 10-week course with the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company Accent Reduction Institute, Shen realized she had a problem.

"I couldn't do an R or an L — at all," said Shen, who currently supervises three scientists who do research on human tissue. Before she took the course, the word "heart" sounded like "hat" and "car pool" like "cah-poo."

Asterand Inc. runs a human tissue bank for research on the genetic causes of diseases like cancer and operates a 55-person lab in Detroit and one in Britain, and has 100 employees worldwide. It paid $1,800 for the 10-week course to teach Shen and her colleague Philip Saywrayne Jr., an accountant from Liberia, to soften their accents.

The class is a step beyond courses that teach English as a second language. It focuses on teaching tongues, lips and teeth how to form the closest thing to an American sound.

In a recent class, company president and instructor Judy Ravin helped students pronounce the letter R by mimicking the sounds of an angry dog. "ARRR!!" she yelled and they both growled back.

Ravin's company, which she created in 1999 after leaving her job teaching accent reduction at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, grew slowly at first. She made $8,000 her first year.

But in 2005, with four part-time employees, earnings of $70,000, 10 corporate clients and 50 individual clients, Ravin sold her company to Ann Arbor-based software developer Menlo Associates for an undisclosed sum.

Nine months later, the reformed company has 12 full- and part-time employees, projected earnings of $500,000, 27 corporate clients and 75 individual clients.

Since the purchase, Accent Reduction Institute has developed a program that promises to get rid of accents in 28 days. The program now has a line of software that has been adopted by more than 30 companies and universities across the country including General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler, Daewoo Heavy Industries America Corporation, Cisco Systems and Federal Mogul.

Ravin also has contracts with dozens of universities including Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University to certify instructors in teaching accent reduction.

The institute charges $1,500 to certify teachers using the Ravin method. To enroll in her course, candidates must be a licensed language teacher or a certified speech pathologist.

"It's not about removing the accent," said Ravin. "It's about eliminating a language barrier."

An accent that is too hard to understand often presents a real hurdle in a person's career; holding back a person from promotions, projects or opportunities to lead, Ravin said.

"If people have to keep telling you 'what?,' 'excuse me?,' forget it," Ravin said. "You won't get the job or promotion."