Message from the chair

Gary Weismer Headshot

We proudly present you with our second e-newsletter. Last year’s newsletter reached well over athousand former students and generated an amazing amount of clicks, which reflects our solid and involved alumni base. Thanks for continued recognition of your time at UW-Madison and in our department, as an important and happy milestone along the path of your professional and personal growth.

In the past year our undergraduate program has continued to grow, while faculty have gotten new research grants in areas ranging from speech-language development in children with cerebral palsy, with autism, with cochlear implants, for work on tissue characteristics of the vocal folds, swallowing disorders, and studies of the effect of bilingualism in typically-developing children and children with developmental disorders. Early in 2013 we admitted a new group of graduate students for clinical training — 25 in the SLP program, 10 in the Au.D. program — from among more than 400 applications.

On the flip side of the training coin, in May we graduated 42 students who completed their clinical degrees. This summer, two members of our world-class faculty were informed that they received major awards from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the Loon group had a Madison reunion, and another group of students went to Guatemala to provide diagnostic services to a large group of children. This fall, we initiated a new one-year program, the Capstone Certificate in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

In this newsletter we’ll tell you a little more about the Capstone Certificate, bring you up to date on a faculty emerita who many of you will remember fondly, hear from an 1975 alumna of our graduate program, and tell you more about the continuing saga of the Loon group. We also have a profile of one of our junior faculty members who has already made substantial research and instructional contributions to our department and the field.

As always, we greatly depend on the financial support of our alumni and friends. Every gift, no matter the size, makes a difference. We hope that you can make a gift and I invite you to learn about how your gifts make a difference to your alma mater.

Please don’t forget to send us your contact information, and news of your professional and/or personal activities; if you are willing, we would love to share these with the rest of our alumni.

To another great year,

Gary Weismer

Oros Bascom Professor and Chair