Date: Feb 08, 2011

Faculty News from the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences

Hofstra University, Hempstead NY …

Professors Kathleen Scott and Jenny Roberts Receive Research Grant from the Edith Glick Shoolman Children’s Foundation

Assistant Professor Kathleen Scott and Associate Professor Jenny Roberts of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences have been awarded a $15,450 grant from the Edith Glick Shoolman Children’s Foundation for a “Language and Literacy Project” for at-risk kindgarteners that they have been running since 2006 at a local elementary school.

The “Language and Literacy Project” joins the resources of the school with Hofstra’s Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Department and the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center. Services are provided by students in Hofstra’s graduate program in  speech-language pathology, who are supervised by clinical staff, faculty in the department, and a classroom teacher.

To date the program, run by Drs. Roberts and Scott and Clinical Supervisor Melissa Fitzgerald, has provided service to roughly 70 children on an ongoing weekly basis throughout the full school year. It has provided in-service training for kindergarten teachers in the school, ongoing assessment data for the district, and direct services to children in the kindergarten program. It has also provided intensive clinical training for 14 Hofstra graduate student interns in the department.

The grant from the Edith Glick Shoolman Children’s Foundation will provide funding for a new classroom computer, specialized literacy software, picture books chosen specifically for their narrative qualities, and classroom materials such as story puppets, white boards, and take-home materials. The funding will also help to provide new language and literacy materials for all the kindergarten classrooms in the school.

Professor Jason Davidow Awarded the 2010 Advancing Academic-Research Careers Award from ASHA

Assistant Professor Jason Davidow has been awarded a 2010 Advancing Academic-Research Careers (AARC) Award from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association. The AARC is a highly competitive award given to new faculty in higher education to support their academic and research endeavors in the field of communication sciences and disorders.

The AARC Awards are granted to support activities such as improving teaching skills; mentoring graduate students; participating in research activities; preparing a grant application; preparing a manuscript or publication; and presenting at a professional meeting.
Professor Davidow’s research focuses on speech production changes during fluency-inducing conditions (FICs are speaking styles that temporarily eliminate or drastically reduce moments of stuttering). The FICs that reduce stuttering the most include chorus reading, singing, prolonged speech, and metronomic speech. His work is aimed at finding speech production changes that are responsible for the fluency that results during the FICs. Dr. Davidow is also interested in, and has begun to research, treatment outcomes and the neurophysiology of stuttering.

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Hofstra University’s Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences in Hofstra University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers comprehensive programs of study for those who are interested in human communication and communication disorders. In addition to a faculty made up of experts in the field, the department has numerous research laboratories and an on-campus clinic which serve to enhance opportunities for student learning. For more information on the faculty and the department visit www.hofstra.edu/slhs .


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Related Link: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences