Category: College of Applied Health Sciences

Service to the profession marks John J. O’Neill’s legacy in Speech and Hearing Science

Aug. 22, 2023 | Bruce Adams

John O’Neill is credited with playing “a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science” at Illinois
(Illinois archives)

The Department of Speech and Hearing Science’s history of cultivating a spirit of leadership through mentoring and service to the profession owes much to John J. O’Neill.

O’Neill interviewed to chair the Division of Speech and Hearing Science in the Department of Speech at the 1958 American Speech and Hearing Association convention in New York. Already known for his expertise in clinical psychology and rehabilitative audiology, O’Neill left Ohio State University for Illinois in 1959, where, as the new division chair, he instilled the expectation that faculty and students would match his dedication to service. Upon his hiring, O’Neill was charged with further integrating the speech and audiology areas, developing the graduate program, obtaining grants and centralizing the department under one roof. He tackled all this as he widened the department’s contributions to speech and hearing programs across Illinois and beyond. Department faculty, graduate students and undergraduates contributed to training, clinical work and the efforts of professional associations at the local, state and national levels.

In his obituary, published by the News-Gazette on July 5, 2009, O’Neill was described as having “played a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois to its current status as the nationally ranked Department of Speech and Hearing Science and served as the first head of the department from 1973 to 1979.” O’Neill published more than 80 journal articles and technical reports and was the author or co-author of four textbooks. Although he retired in 1991, O’Neill remained active in SHS, serving for years as the department’s format checker for theses and dissertations.

In a 2010 tribute at the Annual John J. O’Neill Lecture, Tanya Gallagher, a former dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences and an alumna of SHS, called O’Neill a “highly respected researcher whose landmark work advanced the field of aural rehabilitation, a skilled administrator who built one of the leading speech and hearing science programs in the nation and helped our national association take its place as one of the major scientific and professional organizations.”

Gallagher—who received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from SHS, said, “Dr. O’Neill had attracted some of the brightest thinkers of our field to this program, and the intellectual vitality within the small white house that housed the program then [the old Lorado Taft house] was palpable and energizing. It was the place to be, where it was happening, and we knew it even then.” 

Another SHS alumna, Judith LeDuc, had a similar feeling about O’Neill. 

“I first met John O’Neill when I came to interview him about the Speech Science Program at Illinois. I walked into his office, and there he was, with his feet resting on his desk. I thought, ‘My kind of guy!’”

LeDuc, who got her master’s degree in 1971, went on to work as a speech-language pathologist at the University of Illinois Medical Center and developed both outpatient and inpatient hospital-based pediatric programs, as well as a private practice. 

“I was interested in child language, and he assured me that the faculty at Illinois brought a wealth of knowledge and research to the program,” said LeDuc, who has also been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, Rush Medical Center  and DePaul University. “He was passionate about the field, dedicated to serving, and somehow was always able to hold the department together, as faculty and students paraded through.”

John Deck, who got his master’s and Ph.D. from Illinois, credited O’Neill for his guidance and direction and said O’Neill encouraged him to take a job as a speech pathologist at the Danville VA Medical Center in Illinois. Through the years at Danville, more than 500 graduate and doctoral students from the division (and later, department) of SHS gained clinical experience. O’Neill was Deck’s Ph.D. advisor, and, as Deck said, “We would discuss important legislation affecting funding for the profession. Conversations Dr. O’Neill and I had about legislation struck close to home … During our discussions, I discovered that no one among the Big Ten schools in speech and hearing did more to help create traineeships for graduate students than John J. O’Neill. So many of us have benefited from his efforts and his legacy.”

O’Neill and Deck, who later worked at Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, worked to secure traineeships with stipends for speech-language-pathology and audiology students. 

O’Neill was also a pioneer in forming the Illinois Speech and Hearing Association in February 1960, and he was a co-founder in 1966 and past president of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, which helped establish the department’s national reputation in that area. In 1969, he served as president of ASHA. He was a charter member of the Council on Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, a member of numerous ASHA committees and boards, and ultimately a recipient of ASHA’s Honors of the Association in 1979.

O’Neill’s activity with these associations transferred to his students and colleagues as well. LeDuc, for example, said O’Neill “encouraged us to attend Illinois Speech and Hearing Association meetings, as well as ASHA annual meetings. It was soon after graduate school that I began to serve on ASHA’s legislative council, and ISHA’s program and local arrangements committees. My work on ASHA’s boards and councils continued for more than 40 years. For most of my career, I served the underserved. It was that O’Neill voice in my head.”

The SHS faculty today continue in that spirit. Faculty serve on committees within ASHA, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation and the Acoustical Society of America. They are officers in the Eastern Illinois Speech-Language Hearing Association and the Illini Chapter of the Illinois Association of the Deaf, and they serve on Advisory Boards of the Illinois State Board of Education, the American Tinnitus Association and the National Down Syndrome Society, among others. 

“As we celebrate the department’s history and the contributions of its pioneering faculty, we also affirm our commitment to giving back to the community, serving the professions, and honoring the legacy of those who came before us,” said Department Head Pamela Hadley.

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Fairbanks and Paden brought rigor to ASHA journals and credibility to SHS

June 03, 2023 | Bruce Adams

Elaine Pagel Paden co-wrote the first book on phonological approaches to treatment for highly unintelligible children
(Photo provided)

From Johnson to Fairbanks,
Yes, let us all shout.
We now can forget
What semantic’s about…

For mere words and bandiage,
We’ll now take advantage
Of dials and meters
And stuff.

ASHA’s First Journal

This ode, written by D.W. Morris and quoted in Elaine Pagel Paden’s book “History of the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1925-1958,” was an introduction to Grant Fairbanks when he was selected as the third editor of the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders in 1948 (succeeding Wendell Johnson). It was the field’s first professional/scientific journal and the only journal of the American Speech and Hearing Association. Before Fairbanks’ tenure as editor, the journal had resembled, in part, a newsletter or trade journal for the nascent association and field more than the top-quality scientific journal he envisioned. All that was about to change.

Fairbanks was named professor of speech and director of a new Speech Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois in 1948. The laboratory gained renown for technical research, and students earned the first doctoral degrees in speech and hearing science bestowed by Illinois, going on to significantly influence the field. 

Whereas previous editors of JSHD were clinicians, Fairbanks, an expert in experimental phonetics, was the first research scientist to serve as editor. As such, he brought to the journal an ironclad devotion to science and determination to make it a rigorous scholarly publication and solidify ASHA as a credible organization. In her book, Paden noted the “razor-sharp intellect of Grant Fairbanks slashing directly at the core of the issue” during discussions at association business meetings. Fairbanks and his colleague Raymond Carhart were described as “clear-headed organizers” for the association’s new membership plan in 1950 and “forceful representatives of the research scientists and the audiologists, respectively.” This matched Fairbanks’ drive at Illinois as a teacher, researcher and mentor. The national impact and profile of the newly minted Department of Speech increased considerably after World War II, thanks in large part to his work and that of colleagues such as Paden.

As editor of JSHD, Fairbanks immediately shared the journal’s editorial work with a staff of five associate editors. Their work became truly editorial, aiding authors in crafting articles and carefully screening submissions to maintain a standard of excellence. Paden joined the editorial staff in 1949. The journal found its scholarly voice, based on what SHS Associate Professor Emerita Cynthia Johnson Parsons called, “a backbone of science.” With its headquarters at the University of Illinois, the university provided staff financial and logistical support for the journal, expanding the Department of Speech’s influence in speech and hearing science. 

Fairbanks and Paden

Fairbanks brought prior experience as a consulting or associate editor for the Quarterly Journal of Speech and other journals to his editorial position at JSHD, which he held from 1949-54. In 1955, he received ASHA’s Honors of the Association for his exemplary service and high-quality research, a testament to his crucial role in the association and the profession. Among his many accomplishments, Fairbanks was famous for his widely used textbook, “Voice and Articulation Drillbook, Second Edition,” published in 1960 by Harper and Row. Fairbanks left Illinois in 1962 to take a director of research position in California. Parsons summarized Fairbanks’ leadership at the journal and Illinois as “a powerful force as we grew our field from scratch.” 

Paden served on the editorial staff of JSHD for Fairbanks’ entire tenure as editor. She joined the Illinois faculty in 1952, working in phonetics and phonology and serving as acting head of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science from 1979-81. At Illinois, Paden was a forerunner in child phonology and its extension to intervention for speech disorders, helping preschoolers acquire speech sounds. Her work influenced clinical education in communication sciences and disorders at many of the top university programs throughout the country. Paden also helped establish the annual Midwestern Child Phonology Conference (now the International Child Phonology Conference) and interviewed pioneers in the field for ASHA’s archives and her 1970 book.

SHS Professor Emeritus Ehud Yairi said, “Paden pioneered research in normal child phonological development as well as in clinical methods applied to child phonological disorders.” He noted that she developed the earliest course dedicated to the topic. “Her work greatly altered the traditional concept of ‘articulation disorders,” he said.

Later, in collaboration with her former student, Professor Barbara Williams Hodson, Paden wrote the first book on phonological approaches to treatment for highly unintelligible children. Hodson and Paden’s “Targeting Intelligible Speech: A Phonological Approach to Remediation, Second Edition (1991)” has had a far-reaching and enduring impact. In the preface, the authors thanked Grant Fairbanks, writing that his “teaching and research have had a lasting influence on our thinking.”

In the early 1980s, Parsons was on faculty with Paden. “I used this book all the years I taught SHS 430 Development and Disorders of Phonology and Articulation, from Elaine’s retirement until my last semester of teaching before my own retirement, in the spring of 2021,” Parsons said.

Yairi first met Paden at the 1976 ASHA convention in Houston, when she interviewed him for his faculty position at Illinois.

“As I gradually built and expanded my research work into the Illinois International Stuttering Research Program, Elaine joined us and became an important member of the team,” Yairi said, adding that they co-authored several scientific articles and book chapters on the relation between stuttering and phonological disorders.

In 1993, Paden received both the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of Iowa and Honors of the Association from ASHA, the highest award in the field.

From One Journal to Many  

At its 1957 convention, ASHA’s Executive Council decided to split the content of JSHD into two journals, retaining JSHD and founding a new journal, the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. JSHR was devoted to basic research in speech and hearing processes, while JSHD focused on clinical research. The first issue of JSHR was published in March 1958. It included “Effects of Delayed Auditory Feedback Upon Articulation,” written by Fairbanks and Newman Guttman, a researcher at Bell Laboratories who got his Ph.D. at Illinois. Subsequent issues of JSHR were filled with articles written by and with scholarly attribution to department graduates. 

The two journals were merged into one in 1991 under the JSHR title, with the name changed to The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research in 1997. There are six significant journals in speech and hearing sciences now—including The American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and the American Journal of Audiology—no doubt a reflection of Fairbanks’ and Paden’s impact on ASHA’s first journal, with their firm commitment to straightforward facts, accuracy and scientific detail.

“I was a graduate student when the decision was made to consolidate JSHD and JSHR and create two new publications to disseminate work with direct clinical relevance,” said Professor and SHS Department Head Pamela Hadley. “These journals showcased cutting-edge clinical research studies and experimented with exciting and highly readable new formats such as tutorials and expert opinions. AJSLP and AJA remain critically important today for introducing best practices to graduate students and helping practicing clinicians stay up to date.”

In her book, Paden wrote “one of the chief reasons for the existence of a professional or learned society is the sharing of knowledge in the field among its members.” With the launch of its first journal, “not only was the status of the association notably increased, but its membership rolls began an accelerated upward surge which must be attributed, at least in part, to the reputation of the journal.“ 

In its 50th anniversary year, the Department of Speech and Hearing Science is proud to claim a seminal role in the establishment of the journals in the field, through the hard work and dedication of its pioneering faculty, Professors Fairbanks and Paden.

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SHS Clinic gives students, faculty the opportunity to provide clinical services for the community

May 15, 2023 | Bruce Adams

The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic is located at 201 S. Oak Street in Champaign
(Photo provided)

Nestled in the University of Illinois’ Research Park is a place where the Department of Speech and Hearing Science improves communication and quality of life using evidence-based practices on a daily basis. This mission goes back to the founding of the department.

The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic, operated by SHS, provides a full range of diagnostic and therapeutic services to 200 children and adults annually. The clinic serves individuals in the local community and across Illinois via in-person and telepractice means, providing services to clients across the lifespan. 

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, and 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the celebration of that occasion, as well as the 50th anniversary of SHS being established at the University of Illinois. The month’s theme of Building a Strong Foundation and its emphasis on “life-altering treatment” fit nicely with the department’s history of service, instruction and research.

During the month free pediatric and adult hearing and speech-language screenings will be offered to community members. Graduate students will perform the screenings with supervision from certified audiologists and speech-language pathologists. The event will be held at the clinic at 2001 S. Oak St. Suite B in Champaign on the morning of Wednesday, May 24, and the afternoon of Thursday, May 25. All are welcome and can call the clinic at 217-333-2205 if interested in scheduling a free screening.

Other community activities have included:

  • Presentations from second-year masters students at the OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center stroke support group’s monthly meeting.
  • Presentations at the Parkinson’s Disease Support Group of Champaign County about the role of speech-language pathology and its benefits for quality of life in Parkinson’s disease.
  • Convenient, no-charge audiology and hearing care services provide to residents of Clark Lindsey Nursing Home. Doctor of Audiology students informed residents about listening and repair strategies, cleaned and maintained hearing aids, and cleaned earwax out of residents’ ears.
  • Free hearing and speech-language screenings at the Child Development Laboratory on campus and at Chesterbrook Academy Preschool.
  • Sharing information about communication disorders and the services available at the clinic with the community as part of the College of Applied Health Sciences booth at the Urbana Market on the Square.

Graduate students in audiology and speech-language pathology develop knowledge and skills to provide clinical care to the community through their academic coursework and clinical practica experiences.

“As a clinic, we’re working very closely with the department,” said Clarion Mendes, a speech-language pathologist at the clinic and a clinical assistant professor in SHS. As Mendes explains, exposure to the needs of the community in the clinic informs teaching.

“Part of our mission is to intertwine the two and not see them as distinct entities,” she said. “The department has gone through a curriculum revision for the master’s program in recent years that highlights cultural and linguistic diversity, and if we look at that with a broader lens, that also includes looking at speech differences rather than considering them as disabilities. Speaking for myself, my clinical population nearly exclusively consists of marginalized populations. I work nearly exclusively with gender-diverse individuals. Working within that landscape requires a lot of reflection and cultural humility, constantly revising how I approach clinical practice and teach it to my students.”

The clinic gives students the unique opportunity to provide cutting-edge care informed by research and clinical expertise in an immersive environment under the supervision of licensed and nationally certified audiologists and speech-language pathologists. While clients are receiving care, they are contributing to new discoveries in the assessment and treatment of communication disorders and training the next generation of speech, language, and hearing clinicians and researchers.

Working with external partners and increasing the diversity of the student body bring fresh viewpoints and experiences to the clinic and department. In fact, the international composition in the clinical programs body is at a 10-year high, with seven international students in the clinical programs in audiology and speech-language pathology. “Efforts are also underway to expand the accepted insurances to get a broader patient base,” Clinical Assistant Professor Sadie Braun said.

Clinical work powers education and research and has motivated SHS since its humble beginnings. Jennifer Dahman, a speech-language pathologist and clinical assistant professor at SHS, credits her work as a clinical educator for making her a “better speech-language pathologist.”

“Yes, we teach the how, but more importantly, we teach the why,” she said. “And if we don’t know the why then we find out. Being able to explain that active kind of learning perspective to students translates into their service delivery.”

Learn more about the Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic by visiting the website.

Return to the SHS at 50 page

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Can you understand me, Siri?

May 21, 2024 | Anna Flanagan

The Speech Accessibility Project aims to amass a database of audio recordings from people with disabilities that affect their speech. (Getty Images)

Speech recognition software such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Amazon Echo, Cortana and Siri allow anyone to access information and use smart home technologies through spoken questions and commands. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately, these devices typically don’t recognize speech that is affected by a disability.

Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, wants to change that. He launched the Speech Accessibility Project (SAP), which aims to amass a database of audio recordings from people with disabilities that affect their speech. Volunteers with Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), stroke-related disabilities, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome record responses to three different types of prompts to capture commands, phonetically diverse speech such as one might produce when reading aloud, and conversational speech. 

SHS Associate Professors Laura Mattie and Marie Moore Channell are leading the Illinois Down Syndrome Team. “People with Down syndrome have intelligibility issues so it’s common for them to not be understood at all or to be misunderstood by voice recognition systems,” Mattie said. And it’s not just that it’s the hot new thing, as Channell observed. “These systems are among the strategies we put into place to make life easier for people with disabilities,” she said. One can imagine the frustration that results from being unable to use technologies that are supposed to improve your life.

Mattie said she and Channell put a lot of effort into developing the prompts for the recordings “…to make them representative of the kinds of things for which individuals would be using the software.” Added Channell, “It’s about making sure on the front end that the recordings are valuable and representative so that what goes into the database is relevant.”

The Speech Accessibility Project database initially will be available to the consortium of technology companies that are funding the project, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, before becoming widely available to the public.

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Anatomy of a pioneer: Willard R. Zemlin

April 04, 2023 | Bruce Adams

Willard Zemlin, right, uses an early research lab setup to examine the adult oral cavity (Illinois archives)

Willard R. Zemlin was fascinated by how speech and hearing work. He brought an array of skills and interests to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Born in Two Harbors, Minn., he worked in radio and television repair and electronics, was a locomotive engineer with the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railroad and served as a sergeant in the infantry with the U.S. Army in Korea.

Zemlin completed a bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology and a master’s degree in speech pathology at the University of Minnesota. The work done by his wife, Eileen, in speech pathology inspired him to leave his job and pursue a Ph.D. in speech pathology with a focus on vocal science.

Zemlin began making the connection between instruction, clinical practice and research when he joined the Illinois faculty as an assistant professor of Speech and Hearing Science in 1962.

Zemlin directed the Speech and Hearing Research Laboratory from 1962 to 1975. He undertook a systematic and comprehensive investigation of the anatomy and physiology of speech, language and hearing systems. He utilized his considerable photographic skills (with the permission and assistance of the School of Basic Medical Sciences at Illinois) in the laboratory to capture images from stages of the dissection process and used the pictures to supplement his lectures to enhance his students’ understanding of the structures related to human communication. For students, the opportunity to see structures, as opposed to reading about them, clarified the subject matter and made it more interesting.

Zemlin was promoted to associate professor in 1966 and to professor in 1971, with an appointment as professor in the School of Clinical Medicine recognizing his expertise in the anatomical functioning of hearing and speech.

Zemlin was a crucial contributor to the development of innovative laboratory space in the Speech and Hearing Science Building in the 1970s. It was a significant undertaking. His ability to make imaginative use of limited research equipment and simplify learning made him a valued teacher. In turn, Zemlin established lasting relationships with many SHS students as they radiated from campus to work as clinical practitioners, researchers and teachers.

“As a young professor with little money to cover the costs of having conference slides professionally prepared, Willard Zemlin taught me how to shoot and mount my own slides, using his mounted camera in the basement of the SHS Building, said Cynthia Johnson Parsons, an SHS associate professor emerita. “Bill also reminded our communication sciences and disorders field repeatedly that there was a great deal of normal variability in anatomical structures of the speech and hearing mechanism, which was never accounted for in CSD and medical textbooks. He was a strong advocate for observing and studying as many exemplars of an anatomical structure as you could find across people, in order to realize when a structure deviated substantially from normally functioning ones.”

In 1968, Zemlin wrote in the foreword to the first edition of his pioneering book, Speech and Hearing Science: Anatomy and Physiology: “Each of us who is concerned with the rehabilitation of speech, language and hearing should be able to visualize the anatomical structures involved, to understand their usual functions, and to hypothesize how they might function under adverse circumstances.”

The book utilized his laboratory photographs and displayed his skill in drawing diagrams, resulting in more than 400 images and illustrations. With this collection, Zemlin captured every bone, cartilage, muscle and tissue related to the speech and hearing mechanisms. At that time, David Kuehn, SHS professor emeritus, said the book was “clearly the best, [if not] the only, text that dealt specifically with anatomy and physiology of the speech and hearing mechanisms.” Kuehn considered it to be a magnificent text, praising it for its timeless content.

Zemlin’s textbook became the most widely and longest-used one in the field—his legacy, according to Kuehn. Current and former faculty members in SHS remember learning from it as students and later using it in classes they taught. Pamela Hadley, SHS professor and department head, said she “actually traced all those illustrations to make flashcards with the origin, insertion, fiber direction and function listed on the back.” Johnson Parsons said, “After I graduated from the University of Iowa, I continued to use the textbook and its illustrations when I taught phonetics and articulation/phonological disorders courses at the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois.” Kuehn used the textbook to teach the SHS course in the anatomy and physiology of the speech mechanism.

Later editions of Speech and Hearing Science included images of laryngeal behavior that Zemlin captured using an innovative photographic method he developed using a high-speed motion picture camera. Patricia Monoson from the University of Arkansas described it in the introduction to the fourth edition in 1998 as “the book you are about to read, learn, study and use as a reference for the rest of your professional life.”

Read more about Zemlin:

Zemlin bio from Illinois Distributed Museum

Shaping the teachings of speech, hearing anatomy for decades

Return to the SHS 50th main page

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Department of Speech and Hearing Science rose from a humble start

March 09, 2023 | Bruce Adams

In 2023, SHS celebrated its 50th anniversary. The articles below highlight the key people and research that shaped SHS into the strong program it is today.

Dr. Severina Nelson (left) was a pioneer in the field of speech therapy. (photo courtesy University of Illinois Archives)

As humble beginnings go, it would be difficult to top that of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois.

In 1938, Dr. Severina E. Nelson repurposed a closet in Lincoln Hall to start an outreach program providing speech therapy. She began by assisting a student with some articulation difficulties. Sharing an office with colleagues and unable to find a private room, Nelson said, “Finally, the janitor volunteered to donate his mop closet so that I could set up a speech therapy lab. He moved to the basement.”

If that were all there was to it, Nelson would go down in campus history as one of the more determined, innovative, and resourceful professors at Illinois and as a founder of what, in 1973, became the Department of Speech and Hearing Science (SHS).

But there is more to Severina Nelson, and SHS, than that.

“Nowadays, our culture is notoriously rough on the dedicated person with a cause, especially a woman,” wrote a group of students to Nelson upon her retirement in 1964. “It is true that all new concepts only get recognition after someone has spent years being persistent and farsighted until finally, the disbelievers are made uncomfortable and become believers. You’ve been a woman with a gleam in your eye, and thank heaven, you never became a casualty of our system.”

Nelson earned her B.S. in 1918 and her M.A. in 1923 in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She began her professional life as a high school teacher in Iowa, coming back to Urbana-Champaign in 1920 as an associate instructor in the Division of Public Speaking in the Department of English. After earning her M.A. degree, she pursued a career teaching interpretive speech. She was an engaging speaker, giving countless readings for campus groups, on tours across Illinois, and on radio shows. This led to her co-authoring a best-selling speech textbook with Charles H. Woolbert in 1927: The Art of Interpretive Speech (with a fourth edition still in press in the 1960s).

In 1932, Nelson was elected president of Sigma Delta Phi, a national honorary women’s dramatic and speaking fraternity. Fittingly, it was Nelson who introduced aviator Amelia Earhart during her March 21, 1935 appearance on campus—two years before Earhart’s disappearance. Nelson had built a profile as a director of dramatic productions, including those for the Women’s League, the annual Homecoming “Stunt Show,” and the Hillel Players.

Nelson earned her Ph.D. in 1938 in Speech Pathology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and then did post-doctoral work at the New York Medical College. The work Nelson began by helping college students with speech difficulties received funding and was then extended to community members. In 1938, she brought clinical practice at the University of Illinois into existence by establishing its speech clinic, serving as its director from 1939-59 and as a professor of speech from 1941-64. Some of Nelson’s early research in speech disorders focused on stuttering. She published three seminal articles from 1939-45 in the Quarterly Journal of Speech and The Journal of Pediatrics, on the role of heredity in stuttering, and in the Journal of Speech Disorders, on stuttering in twin types.

In 1939, the Daily Illini described Nelson as “one of the most popular instructors in summer school,” noting that “her office is different from the usual. Here you open the door and find yourself looking into a full-length mirror. Vanity isn’t the reason for the mirror’s being there. She finds it very useful in her speech correction work. Just during the past year, the speech department has made great advances in this work, and much of it has been under Miss Nelson’s supervision. Patients are studied and classified according to their type of speech defect, then they are turned over to students in speech correction classes for help.” (Please see Editor’s Note below regarding terminology use in historical records) Most of the student therapists were women whom Nelson supported as the faculty advisor to the campus chapter of Zeta Phi Eta, the national women’s speech sorority.

By 1940, Nelson had secured a $2,000 grant to support her clinic and extensive office and clinical space in Gregory Hall, where individuals with cerebral palsy, hearing disabilities, and cleft palate received therapy. She also had established an educational program in speech therapy at the University of Illinois, with four years of undergraduate coursework and one year of graduate study. From 1943-1944, as the chair of a state legislative committee, Nelson delivered 50 to 75 speeches throughout Illinois to win passage of the committee’s bill to provide supplemental funds for local clinical efforts. With the onset of the World War II, veterans were returning with “organic and psychological disabilities.” The clinic’s funding from the farsighted bills in the Illinois legislature was augmented by federal assistance to veterans. Twenty-seven nationwide colleges and universities received this funding, notably clustered in the Midwest around the University of Illinois, including Indiana University, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and several branches of what would become the University of Wisconsin system.

The demand for speech and hearing specialists was such that Nelson wrote to her department head in 1945 that the University of Illinois Speech and Hearing Clinic was competing against Army and Navy hospitals to recruit therapists for work in the Champaign and Urbana school districts. By 1946, there had been 16 master’s theses recorded in Speech and Hearing Science.

In 1950, under Nelson’s leadership and advocacy the clinic moved to the Lorado Taft House on campus (though, as she wrote in a letter, Nelson was convinced the University planned to demolish the building.) The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that “her enthusiasm, plus a brisk business-like air, are reflected in the rest of her efficient and enthusiastic staff.” A newsletter describing “Dr. Severina Nelson’s informative, vivid, and impressive account of the Illinois Speech Clinic” to the Urbana Rotary Club in January 1955 noted that “Professor Nelson filled her talk with case histories … all interesting. Urbana Rotary played a large part in sparking the state’s program—a program which for some years has been one of the best in the Union.”

When Nelson stepped down as director of the speech clinic in 1959, it had 10 full-time therapists. She resumed full-time teaching in speech pathology and oral interpretation, and by then, had advised more than 125 graduate theses. With her national renown, she was often requested as a speaker by groups and organizations across the country. After retiring in 1964, Nelson moved to Dallas and in 1978, received Honors of the Association from the Illinois Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Contributor: Cynthia Johnson Parsons

Editor’s Note: As in many fields, perspectives and terminology in speech and hearing science (also called communication sciences and disorders) have evolved over the years, away from those appearing early in the historical record. For example, our focus has shifted away from correcting a person’s speech defects toward improving the intelligibility of their speech and enhancing the effectiveness of their communication with others.

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CHAD symposium returns with thanks for pilot grants

March 03, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Pilot grants reignite Chad Symposium, fostering research collaboration and innovation

KCH Associate Professor Naiman Khan’s presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function” (Photo by Lisa Bralts)

The first Center for Health, Aging, and Disability (CHAD) symposium since 2017 was a celebration of the research accomplished with the help of the Pilot Grant Program.

Three researchers from the College of Applied Health Sciences—Naiman Khan, an associate professor in Kinesiology and Community Health; Brian Monson, an assistant professor in Speech and Hearing Science, and Sharon Zou, an assistant professor in Recreation, Sport and Tourism, made a point of thanking CHAD’s grants for helping launch their studies.

Khan, whose presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function,” said CHAD’s funding was vital to his work.

“CHAD was really helpful in us starting a new line of engagement of research,” he said. 

CHAD director Jeff Woods, AHS’ associate dean for research, said to date, 38 pilot grants have been awarded since CHAD was launched in 2010, with $860,000 awarded to AHS researchers for pilot research. Woods described CHAD’s role as “work at the bookends of medicine … with the goal of improving people’s lives.”

“CHAD pilot grants are really important for junior faculty,” Zou said.

And the payoff has been well worth it, Woods said, citing the return on investment as approximately $16 in external funding to $1 in CHAD funding. 

Zou’s presentation was titled “Exploring an Efficient and Equitable Entrance Fee for Public Lands: A Community-based investigation in the Indiana Dunes National Park.”

“I study how people have fun,” Zou said, explaining that it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources. 

The primary purpose of Zou’s study was to “understand visitors’ and surrounding community residents’ perceptions of Indiana Dunes National Park user fees to inform a fee structure that balances revenue generation and equitable access.”

During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zou said, “parks saw explosions of people visiting.” While that was great for parks in terms of revenue, it also led to increasing operation costs at a time when government funding for these sites is being reduced.

“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.

The RST researcher said her preliminary findings indicate there was no consensus from study participants on what “fair” means, and that tension between fairness principles partly explains the longstanding controversy and debate on public land user fees.

Khan’s presentation focused on how poor lifestyle choices can predict an early onset of dementia, noting that obesity worldwide has increased threefold since the 1980s. The KCH researcher said his research, in conjunction with Aditi Das of Georgia Tech, suggested that the a deficiencyin the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)—which has been reported to have beneficial effects on obesity, diabetes mellitus, and serum lipids in animals—was associated with individuals with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher, which is classified as obese.

“BMI is inversely connected to cognitive function,” Khan said. “Only in obese individuals do we see DHEA increase in circulation.” Khan said his preliminary results found:

  • Circulating Omega-3 metabolites were higher among persons with higher weight status and the levels were associated with degree of fat mass
  • Circulating metabolites inversely associated with cognitive function
  • Only observed among persons with overweight and obesity
  • Selectively associated with hippocampal function
  • Implications for memory function

Khan said his overarching goal was to “develop effective lifestyle approaches to improve cognitive function.”

SHS’ Monson discussed his study called “Capturing Prenatal Auditory Experience.”

“If there was a pregnant woman in this audience, that baby would be hearing my voice, and perhaps making judgments,” he said, drawing laughter from the gathering. “How do we know? Because full-term newborns come to the world with memories of what they’ve heard, including the mother’s voice.”

In utero, Monson explained, was a unique acoustic environment. When preterm infants are delivered, they are placed into incubators, which rapidly changed the sound profile, he said. The consequences of those changes include increased risk for sensorineural hearing loss, auditory neuropathy, language and speech developmental delays, auditory attention deficits and auditory processing disorder.

Monson’s study involved a group of pregnant women wearing a LENA listening device twice a week during the third trimester, while the device was placed into cribs of very preterm infants at Carle Foundation Hospital three times a week through their stay in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“Fetuses are getting 2.5 hours a day of speech exposure vs. 32 minutes a day for very preterm infants,” he said. “It’s an alarming difference to me.”
NICU infants may incur a deficit of about 150 hours of speech exposure over the course of the preterm period, he explained.

One of the possible mitigation strategies for very preterm infants could be to provide meaningful targets (about three hours a day of speech exposure) to optimize auditory exposures in NICU settings.

“The maternal heartbeat is never turned off in utero,” he said. “The maternal heartbeat is never turned on in NICU.”

Following the CHAD Pilot Grant success stories, Wendy Rogers, the Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Professor of Applied Health Sciences, talked about the work of Collaborations in Health, Aging, Research, & Technology (CHART).

CHART’s mission is to enable successful aging through:

  • Fundamental research
  • Advanced technology development
  • Education of researchers, developers, healthcare professionals, older adults
  • Guidance for policy decision-making
  • Translation of these efforts to positively affect the lives of older adults

CHART was the first research theme of the College of Applied Health Sciences and boasts the development of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, an interdisciplinary research facility and simulated home environment that helps promote community engagement, industry partnerships, healthcare collaborations and faculty innovation.

Also part of the symposium was the introduction of a new AHS research theme called CARD (Collaborations in the Advancement of Research on Disability), led by KCH Associate Professor Laura Rice and KCH Professor John Kosciulek. CARD is focused on enhancing the health and quality of life of people with disabilities—through research that addresses critical gaps in disability-related knowledge and outreach that engages individuals with disabilities. 

CARD’s short-term goals include:

  • Develop a collaborative working group
  • Develop communication strategies
  • Establish a steering committee of stakeholders
  • Develop and implement outreach and engagement events

Longer-term goals include:

  • Host a bi-annual research symposium
  • Develop a “toolkit” for UIUC faculty to support the performance of disability-related research in the Champaign-Urbana area
  • Respond to disability-related funding opportunities
  • Establish a competitive program to provide supplemental funding to support ongoing disability research among junior faculty
  • Host a seminar series with external experts
  • Establish a research training program for students registered with DRES interested in doing research
  • Support the development of new research registries and/or expansion of current registries

The first CARD meeting is set for March 22.

In kicking off the symposium, AHS Dean Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell said CHAD was “one of the biggest attractions” of her decision to come to Illinois and lead the college.

“When I thought about CHAD, I thought it’d be interesting to lead a college that has this kind of momentum to it, and I’ve been proven correct, year after year,” she said. “CHAD provides students with real-world engagement, and plays an absolutely critical role in their professional development.”

Woods agreed.

“We’re helping put the next generation of scientists into the field.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Dr. Husain Named McCristal Scholar

June 08, 2022 | Anna Flanagan

Fatima Husain uses magnetic resonance imaging in her research.

Dr. Fatima Husain, professor of speech and hearing science, has been named the 2022 King J. and Marjorie R. McCristal Distinguished Scholar in the College of Applied Health Sciences, the most prestigious recognition of scholarly achievement given by the College. The award presentation and McCristal Lecture will take place on August 16, 2022, as part of the AHS Fall College Meeting.

Dr. Husain joined the Department of Speech and Hearing Science as an assistant professor in 2008. She earned her PhD in cognitive and neural systems at Boston University and joined the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, first as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a research fellow.

Dr. Husain uses a combination of computational modeling, brain imaging experiments, and behavioral experiments to research hearing and speech perception, as well as the disorders associated with them, such as hearing loss and tinnitus. Through this multi-method approach, she is able to simulate auditory and speech perception in the brain. The modeling enables her to make predictions that can be tested using behavioral and imaging tools, ultimately facilitating the evaluation of existing therapies and the proposal of novel treatment methods. She is the director of the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.

The King James McCristal Scholar Award was established in 1988 to honor King McCristal, dean of AHS from 1961-1973.

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Alumni Spotlight—Megan-Brette Hamilton

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Jan. 05, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Alumni of the College of Applied Health Sciences have myriad career options thanks to the tremendous diversity of programs. We periodically will put the spotlight on an alum to find out what they’re doing now, what experiences they had and what AHS means to them. This week, we talk to Megan-Brette Hamilton, an SHS alum who is now an assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Auburn University.

Q: Why did you pick SHS?

A: I remember writing my personal statement in 2011 and, as you do, you write the first part as a general statement and then address a specific school for the latter part. As I was writing the latter part of my personal statement for University of Illinois, I realized how much the school aligned with what I was looking for; reputation, professors, university campus setting. It helped that my aunt, someone who had been in the field for decades before me, encouraged me to choose UIUC, and that both of my parents earned degrees from UIUC. Finally, I got advice from a professor at another university to choose my program according to the person I was going to work with for four plus years. And then I found (former SHS Associate Dept. Head) Laura DeThorne. I emailed her, she and I had a phone conversation and I became excited about the work she was doing in her lab and the idea of learning from her. After that, I was convinced I needed to go to AHS/SHS. From day 1, Dr. DeThorne was a strong advocate for me and as a result I received the Graduate College Distinguished Fellowship Award. To be honest, not having to pay for school, that also helped me make my decision.

Q: Which professors had the most impact on you?

A: As I mentioned before, Dr. DeThorne was an advocate for me from day 1. She wasn’t just my advisor, she was someone who valued my clinical background and my prior experience. We eventually formed a very strong friendship and collegial relationship, and we still collaborate. I also was impacted by Dr. Julie Hengst. Not only was she a committee member of mine for 2 of my projects, but because she also had an extensive clinical career before academia, she was able to speak to me in a way that disarmed me about leaving a job where I was a master clinician to re-learning how to be a student. Dr. Robin L. Jarrett was also someone who has had a huge impact on me. I worked in her lab in a different department across campus. In order for me to be the kind of researcher I am today, I needed to learn other ways of doing research from her perspective. The field of CSD often uses quantitative methods and is predominantly White. Working with Dr. Jarrett helped me to learn about qualitative methods from a sociological perspective and understand academia from someone like me, a Black woman, who also was a full professor. Finally, working with Dr. Cynthia Johnson made a long-lasting impact on me. She was a constant source of encouragement as a growing researcher and I learned first-hand from her about how our field and academia had changed throughout the years.

Q: What course did you most enjoy?

A: You have to remember that I earned a degree that allowed/encouraged me to explore classes in other departments. The way I look at my journey at that stage of my life was to take what I knew about my field in the 17 years I’d been in it and then add to it other content areas to enhance the impact I wanted to have on the field of CSD. All that to say, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Schooling taught by Dr. Anne Haas Dyson in the College of Education was a course I really enjoyed. I loved this course because it brought together all of the areas I was passionate about, language, culture, education, and communication. It was a class that wasn’t afraid to talk about race and class and dialects. And it used qualitative methods:) It reminded me why I decided to return to school at the ripe old age of 34, lol.

Q: Did you enter AHS knowing your career path, or did AHS help you decide?

A: As I mentioned earlier, I entered into the PhD program at age 34, after having had a first career as a practicing speech-language pathologist. I entered the program knowing that I was going to have three outcomes; 1) I was going to learn about some amazing content areas that I’d never been privy to, 2) I was going to learn how to do research, and 3) I was going to earn my doctorate. After that, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. I think being in the program prepared me well for my next steps even though I wasn’t sure what they’d be exactly. I ended up going into academia and constantly call myself “the accidental professor,” lol. I also didn’t know where my research focus would end up when I first started. I originally entered the program to study language processing differences with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience and ended up studying cultural-linguistic diversity with a focus on African American English. To be honest, being in the program helped me see a gap in our field that I could fill, so that’s what I’ve been working on ever since.

Q: Did your AHS experience lead to your current job?

A: Yes. I earned a doctorate from a research-intensive university in a department where I was taught how to do research and provided opportunities to teach and supervise. The skills I acquired in the program, including opportunities across departments and disciplines, allowed me to confidently apply for a tenure-track assistant professor position; which is my current job.

Q: What was your favorite on-campus experience?

A: As a daily enjoyment, I really loved working with my PhD classmates. We were from all different backgrounds and studied so many different areas of communication. We learned so much from each other about life and our field. As a one-time kind of experience, I have to say that it was when I ended up working with a wonderful group of doctoral students from the College of Education and being awarded an internal grant. We used it to put on a 2-day workshop aimed at reimagining education for youth in and beyond the classroom. We brought in Drs. Geneva Smitherman, Ana Celia Zentella, H. Samy Alim, and David E. Kirkland. I loved being around all of those intellectual minds and inserting my communication sciences and disorders perspectives into their conversations of education and language.

Q: What does AHS mean to you?

A: I saw AHS as a place that provided me with opportunities to connect with a variety of people and to grow as a researcher and educator. As I said earlier, I originally entered the program to study language processing differences and ended up studying cultural-linguistic diversity. The beauty is that AHS was a place that allowed me to do either. As a result, I was able to become a researcher with a strong interdisciplinary focus who impacts clinical practice within the field of speech-language pathology and beyond.

Dr. Megan-Brette Hamilton is an assistant professor at Auburn University and an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist (SLP)/communication specialist. Prior to academia, Dr. Hamilton worked as an SLP for 10 years in New York City, the largest school district in the U.S., where most of her caseload consisted of African American and Hispanic children. Currently, her research focuses on the classroom/educational and clinical experiences of speakers of other dialects of English, with a particular focus on African American English-speaking children and adults. Her passion lies in exploring the intersection of culture, language/dialect, communication, and literacy. Dr. Hamilton’s work also focuses on the cultural-linguistic competence and perspectives of professionals and students working with culturally-linguistically diverse populations. Through her work, she engages with such professionals by educating them on the importance of recognizing and validating language variations, culture, and identity; thereby raising one’s cultural-linguistic competence. Dr. Hamilton is the host of the Honeybee Connection podcast, author of Successful Strategies for Classroom Communication, and owner of www.meganbrettehamilton.com where she blogs and provides resources. 

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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