College of Liberal Arts

In the course of evolution, humans developed the unique ability to communicate with one another through language. During infancy and childhood, learning to produce and understand speech typically occurs with seemingly little effort. Adults are amazingly fast and accurate in their use of language. In many cases, however, one’s ability to produce spoken language, to hear sounds, or to associate meanings with words can be affected by disorders that arise in infancy, childhood, or later in life. Our department owes its existence to the unique importance of human communication in our lives. We seek to understand how speech, language, and hearing work in the normal system. We try to understand how and why these processes are impaired in a variety of disorders occurring in children, such as hearing impairment, speech-language delays, and stuttering. In adults reduced communicative abilities may occur for many reasons, including hearing loss, neurological diseases, or stroke. We focus intensely on the science of human communication and its disorders, but another, central reason for our existence is to educate professional speech-language pathologists and audiologists who diagnose and treat human communicative disorders. Our basic science and clinical missions are fundamentally intertwined in the everyday activities of the scholars and clinicians who make up our department, so that our scientific efforts have the maximum potential to directly benefit people.

B. Vision.

The discipline of Human Communicative Sciences and Disorders has always been essentially interdisciplinary in nature, because the processes we study have physical, biological, psychological, and linguistic aspects. The future of our discipline is the expansion of this interdisciplinary basis for the study of normal human communicative processes and for the treatment of human communicative disorders. Our department must grow in ways that enhance our ability to embrace new science and technology, and to bring these emerging perspectives to bear on the problems within our discipline. We can accomplish this expansion by hiring faculty in our department who are working on these new perspectives, but also by forming links with life sciences, engineering and other related disciplines both inside and outside Purdue. Ours is a very young discipline, and fundamental questions about human speech, language, and hearing processes are unanswered. Thus the potential for our discipline to contribute to the growth of basic knowledge and to the treatment of human communicative disorders is great.

II. Mission

The mission of the department encompasses the areas of learning, discovery and engagement, and dovetails with the missions of the College of Liberal Arts and the University as a whole.

Specific missions of the department are:

Learning
To provide undergraduate and graduate education in normal and disordered aspects of communication, including education in basic and applied research.
To provide undergraduate students with pre-professional training to prepare them to enter graduate programs in communicative disorders.
To provide graduate students with the education to become certified speech-language pathologists/audiologists, teachers, and/or research scientists.

Discovery

To conduct basic research to elucidate the mechanisms underlying normal and disordered speech, language, and hearing.
To conduct applied research that will help speech-language pathologists and audiologists to remediate communicative disorders.

Engagement

To serve the people of the local and larger communities by providing clinical services and information through the Audiology and Speech-Language Clinics.
To be a preeminent resource for the dissemination of information and clinical training strategies to professionals nationally and internationally, through publications, presentations at meetings and distance education programs.

III. Current Status of the Department

Faculty and Staff.

SLHS has 16.9 tenure track faculty, 2.0 clinical faculty, 3.0 FTE continuing lecturers/instructors, 10.5 clinical professional staff, and 10.5 support staff.
The department loosely defines areas of specialization of faculty/staff. These areas include Speech-Language Pathology, Audiology, Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the interdisciplinary programs, Neurosciences and Linguistics. These are “loosely” defined, because in most cases, faculty contribute to more than one area. For example, someone may teach clinical Audiology courses, hearing sciences courses, and also be a member of the Neuroscience group.

We believe that this organization is optimal for us, because the areas of our discipline are fundamentally interdisciplinary in scope. This also gives our department a cohesive and flexible organization, so that decisions are made for the benefit of the unit as a whole.

Graduate Programs

SLHS has 17 students enrolled in doctoral programs in Speech-Language Pathology, Audiology, and Speech/Hearing Sciences. Doctoral education in SLHS has strong interdisciplinary bases in Neuroscience and Linguistics. Our largest graduate enrollment is found in our clinical professional program in Speech-Language Pathology (enrollment = 55). Graduates from this M.S. program typically enter professional practice as speech-language pathologists. In the past year, we developed a new clinical degree in Audiology, the AuD, which will replace the M.S. degree as the entry level for professional practice in Audiology. This is a new, joint program with the Department of Otolaryngology at the IU School of Medicine. We expect to have 40 students in the AuD program when it is fully subscribed. This program started in the Fall, 2003, with a class of 10 students, and full enrollment is expected by Fall, 2006.

Undergraduate Program

There are 161 eight SLHS undergraduate majors. Most of these are pursuing preprofessional education in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology. We have a growing number of undergraduate students, however, who are interested in research/academic careers in the discipline.

Discovery

Research activities in SLHS span a broad range of topics and methodologies. Some faculty are discovering processes involved in the biological bases of speech and hearing, while others are exploring the linguistic structure of manual, signed languages. Extramural research funding has increased from $400,000 in 1992 to $2,751,000 in the 2001/2002 fiscal year. Most of our funding is from the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders (NIDCD); however, some is from the NSF.

Engagement

Our Audiology and Speech-Language Clinics are a major source of engagement activity for SLHS. We have a full-service in-house Audiology Clinic, which is open to the public. There are approximately 1200 patient visits per year. We provide services across the entire lifespan, from hearing aids for older patients, to aural rehabilitation for hearing impaired children, to hearing screening for newborn infants. Our Speech-Language Clinic has approximately 1000 client visits per year. This is also a full-service clinic, which treats a broad range of human communication (including voice disorders, disorders arising from neurological diseases and stroke, stuttering, child speech-language disorders) and swallowing disorders.  Through distance learning activities we provide continuing education to approximately 800 practicing speech-language pathologists and audiologists throughout Indiana each year.  Videotapes of our distance learning program are sold to professionals around the world.

Current Strengths

• World leader in educating Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists.
• Our graduate program in Speech-Language Pathology is ranked 4th nationally (U.S. News and World Report).
• Our graduate program in Audiology is ranked 13th nationally (U.S. News and World Report).
• Internationally renowned Areas of Excellence include our programs in normal and disordered development of speech and language in infants and children and the neuroscience of human communication.
• Many interdisciplinary research efforts, with ties to Neuroscience and Linguistics. • Large portfolio of NIH and NSF funding.
• Outstanding educational and research program in American Sign Language.

Challenges/Weaknesses

• Lack of adequate space and poor quality of existing space.
• Lack of core support for research and clinical programs (e.g., for subject recruitment and screening, for research participant/client follow-up, maintenance of clinical files and data bases).
• Inadequate numbers of faculty & staff in key areas.
• Lack of integration of clinical and research programs.

IV. Goals

1. Preeminence in Graduate Education. To maintain our preeminence in graduate education in Speech-Language Pathology and in Audiology and to further enhance the reputation of SLHS at Purdue as a premier clinical and research program.

2. Research Excellence. To continue to be a leader in research in our discipline and to expand our efforts to infuse the latest advances in life sciences and technology into our efforts to understand human communication and its disorders.

3. Enrich Undergraduate Experience. To enrich our undergraduate programs by expanding the range of course offerings and by reducing class size and to increase undergraduates’ awareness and knowledge of the fields of speech-language pathology and audiology by increasing opportunities for observation of clinical and research activities.

4. Clinical Leadership. To be a leader in developing and providing clinical services to people with communicative disorders.

5. Interdisciplinary Focus. To increase our participation in and contribution to interdisciplinary research and education, with a major focus on Neurosciences and Linguistics.

V. Plans for Achieving these Goals.

Specific Plans to Contribute to Goals 1-5

Move the department into new space, which will incorporate all of the core teaching, research, and clinical activities of the department. The new department home would be designed to facilitate state of the art clinical practice and the expanded scope of research in our discipline (e.g., wet labs). We will work with the College of Liberal Arts and the Development Office to identify a lead donor and other funds for this building project. This move should be made as soon as possible. As an interim plan, we will move a group of faculty laboratories out of Heavilon into other space. All faculty and staff will have offices in Heavilon during this interim period, but some labs must be located outside Heavilon. We believe that it is essential for the administration to find space to house laboratories for this interim plan, so that we can move ahead with our strategic plan. To take a successful department like ours and put it “on hold” due to lack of space is not a strategic move. Dean Parcel is negotiating with Provost Sally Mason on behalf of SLHS to locate space that could be used in this interim plan. The possibility of using some of the indirect costs generated by the department to rent research space at Purdue West is currently being explored. If the College of Liberal Arts wants to become more nationally preeminent and to increase extramural funding for research, investment in SLHS is a very good strategy.

Expand the size of the faculty from the present 18.9 to 23 by 2008. The University strategic plan has a major goal of increasing the size of the faculty. In order to do this, academic units are in some cases being asked to reduce the number of TA's in the department in order to qualify for these “strategic plan” faculty lines. In the spring 2004, SLHS agreed to give up one half-time teaching assistant if three strategic plan lines are granted to the department.

The rate of hiring will depend on the success of our interim plan for obtaining additional laboratory space. This would make us one of the larger faculties in the field of communicative sciences and disorders, however, we note that the other top five programs are housed in Universities with on-site medical schools, so that they have a very large number of jointly appointed or adjunct faculty. The medical school environment provides resources for research and scientific collaboration that we simply do not have. While we certainly plan to enhance our ties with the IU Medical Center, the fact is that it is 60 miles away. Thus we believe that a larger “in-house” faculty is a strategic way to offset some of the disadvantages of not having a medical school on campus.

Develop integrated, interdisciplinary, clinical-research teams that include faculty and supervisory staff so that practica, classroom experiences, and research programs are more consistent and better related. This goal would be greatly expedited by the conversion of current administrative professional staff clinical supervisory positions to clinical faculty lines. This conversion is currently in process. These teams also will help to implement research and training programs (for example, a year-round language program based on the current summer-only model, the “Summer Fun” program). Other program areas that are good prospects for forming such teams are fluency and aural rehabilitation. These teams would enhance our Areas of Excellence and would aid us in attracting extramural support for research and training.

Specific Plans to Contribute to Goal 1(Preeminence in Graduate Education) Implement a new clinical doctorate (AuD) in Audiology with 40 students enrolled by Fall, 2006.

Recruit more PhD students so that enrollment increases to 25 by 2007. Focus on bringing more undergraduate students into the graduate program with the goal of obtaining a PhD and working in academic programs.  Ensure that faculty are hired to strengthen areas (or to replace retiring or resigning faculty) that are traditionally well represented in the top programs in our field and in those emerging areas that will be essential for a future leadership role for our department. These are essential to cover teaching in the core areas of the discipline for both Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. Current needs exist in auditory structural/neural biology, pediatric and adult neurogenics, voice, and fluency. Help junior faculty to “jump start” their research careers by reducing their course loads. 

Add 2 FTE SLP clinical faculty to help us to deal with the continuing trends of increasingly complex clients and increased participation of SLP clinical faculty in the classrooms (necessary to meet new ASHA standards and paperwork to document ASHA formative assessments). Partial funding for these positions would come from the speech pathology clinic.  In addition some of the FTE of these individuals may be supported by research grants. 
Add 1 FTE Audiology clinical faculty to meet the needs of the larger Audiology program (number of students will double by 2006). Partial funding for this position would come from audiology clinic funds as well as from funds in the audiology reinvestment program budget.

Further enhance the collaboration between SLHS and the IU Medical Center by developing ties for Speech-Language Pathology.  Obtain training grants in support of clinical education.

Specific Plans to Contribute to Goals 2 (Research Excellence) and 5 (Interdisciplinary Focus).

Enhance existing Areas of Excellence in research by (a) hiring faculty in Audiology/Hearing Science to build a strong developmental research program that will interface with the developmental research efforts on the Speech-Language Pathology/Speech Science side, (b) hiring faculty in Auditory Neuroscience, and (c) hiring more faculty in Neuroscience of language/speech.  Hire faculty so that we have greater depth in areas in which coverage is very thin, for example, audiology, so that faculty can spend the time needed on sponsored research.

Hire faculty who are likely to obtain extramural funding for their research. Examine the NIDCD strategic plan and match potential hires to well funded areas. For example, 50% of the current NIDCD funding portfolio is in hearing/audiology. The SLHS funding portfolio currently is more than 90% in speech, language, voice, and linguistics. Thus there are very large funding opportunities for work in hearing science and audiology that are not being tapped by SLHS faculty. Therefore one target area for future strategic plan hires would match growing research areas in hearing at the NIDCD. Areas currently generating high-impact research activity, and which could be a good match for our department, are pediatric cochlear implants and auditory neural plasticity.

Increase core support for research (e.g. business support, subject recruitment, subject screening and evaluation, research participant/client follow-up, maintenance of clinical files and data bases, software development). Partial funding for these efforts could come from research grants, from future increased return of F&A funds from central administration, and from new program initiatives (e.g., future research centers). For example, SLHS currently has one full-time speech-language pathologist who provides core support for the NIH grants in the department which focus on language acquisition and specific language impairment. These investigators have currently requested that central administration continue funding for this position, which was originally created through a reinvestment program application. Research faculty will apply for core support grants when appropriate funding opportunities are announced.

Hire faculty in SLHS with a view to expanded collaboration with basic sciences groups on campus (genetics, nanotechnology, neurosciences).

Specific Plans to Contribute to Goal 3(Enrich Undergraduate Experience)

Expand the current program for inviting undergraduate students to participate in research projects. As the faculty size increase, we will have enough FTE to teach more undergraduate courses. At present many faculty are very limited in their undergraduate commitment, because they must teach required courses in the graduate program. This also results in very high enrollment courses (typically 40-100 in SLHS undergraduate courses). Areas that need to be covered at the undergraduate level include speech perception, infant vocal development, and biological bases of speech and hearing. In fact, we have added three new upper level undergraduate courses in the past few years, simply due to the increase in our faculty size.

Assuming that our total faculty size does not shrink, this can be done even while providing the reduced (three courses per year) load to the assistant professors.

Add 2 FTE Continuing Lecturers for our growing American Sign Language Program so that hiring is not done every semester on an ad hoc basis, and highly qualified instructors can be retained. This was accomplished Spring, 2004.

Specific Plans to Contribute to Goal 4 (Clinical Leadership)

Convert current AP staff clinical supervisory positions to clinical faculty lines. This will enhance the integration of classroom and clinic instruction. It will improve our ability to attract the top clinical experts in our discipline.

Furthermore it will expedite an increasing role of the clinical faculty in collaboration with the tenure track faculty on research projects.

Increase clinical revenues to continue to support the growth and  development of clinical programs by increasing client numbers so that a broader diversity of clients are served in our inhouse programs.

Provide support for clinical-research teams to focus on applied/efficacy  esearch (e.g., develop a clinical data base system so that client information and participation in research is facilitated).

To explore the possible expansion of continuing education offerings for professional training including conferences and possibly distance learning. Target clinical problems where recent advances in practice are not being well disseminated, for example, programs for school speech-language pathologists who are working with children with cochlear implants. A good existing model for this effort is our annual NSHLLA conference, which in the last two years has had increasing attendance and is generating funding to pay for speakers who are nationally recognized experts in clinical practice.

In this section

• About
• Mission Statement
• History
• Advisory Board
• Strategic Plan