Note From The Chair
Welcome to the 2008-2009 Newsletter!
Once again the Department continues to offer summer courses for professionals and students. We began the summer semester with our courses. Judy Montgomery, Ph.D. and Jennifer Taps, M.S. presented on approaches to response to intervention (RTI). Be sure to check out the projects that were created as a part of these workshops. You may download these projects by going to our home page at http://www.fhsu.edu/commdis/ and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on either of the download links. You are welcome to download any of these Start In Lesson Plans, Loop-Writers, or Sound Brochures. We had a good response to both of these workshops.
We are in the beginning stages of planning the summer workshops for June 2009. I hope to work on the web pages for these workshops over the next several weeks; however, I do know that Lynn Williams, Ph.D. will be presenting June 8-9 on Sound Management: Evidence-Based Practices for Speech Sound Disorders in Children. Our second speaker will be Carol Westby on June 10-11 on Bridging Social and Academic Language. We hope to see you at these workshops. This will be our 27th annual summer workshop!
This summer we had the opportunity to hire Leila Evans, who is a doctoral student from Florida State University. She had worked with Kenn Apel, Ph.D. and Juliann Woods, Ph.D. at FSU and had finished all of her course work and was working on her dissertation. Fort Hays State University has had an ABD Minority-in-Summer-Residence Program for the past two years and we were lucky enough to have an individual in speech-language pathology apply for the position. Leila taught a course on Multicultural Issues in Assessment and Intervention. It was a great experience for our students to have a course on multicultural issues and the faculty enjoyed getting to know and work with Leila.
Overall, we have been able to maintain some consistency in our faculty over the past two years. We were sorry that Tara Carlson had to resign but her husband's company was moved to Wichita. The remaining faculty members have picked up the extra courses and supervision so we have all been extremely busy. We really miss Tara but we wish her and her family the very best in their new adventures! The Herndon Clinic was named as a RiteCare® Childhood Language Center in May. Please see the article in this newsletter regarding the funding support that we receive from the Kansas Scottish Rite Foundation. We owe Marla Staab a big "thank you" for all of the PR work that she did with the Scottish Rite Masons to get this funding for our clinic and we used part of the scholarship money this summer in order to support the services for approximately 30 children who attended our language and literacy groups. Check out the link in this newsletter to read more on those groups.
Various faculty members have attended conferences this fall. Marla and I attended the annual Scottish Rite Childhood Language Conference in early September in Washington D.C. I presented two posters during this conference. Anne, Jacque, Marla, Marcia and I attended the Kansas Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Overland Park. Fred Britten and 18 graduate students attended the ASHA National Convention in Chicago. Phil Sechtem had two presentations at ASHA but had to have others help him with the presentations since he had been accepted to a special grant writing project in Washington D.C. See the link for presentations in this newsletter.
Although the Department had submitted an application for the Council of Higher Education Accreditation Award for Progress in Student Learning Outcomes last fall, we did not receive the award. However, our Assistant Provost, Chris Crawford, asked us to update our application and resubmit. It is an honor that Dr. Crawford continues to recognize what the Department has accomplished in the area of student learning outcomes. Hopefully, we will have good news to report to you next year.
The economy is definitely having an effect on us at the university level. Not only will we have some budget cuts beginning in January and for the upcoming 2009-2010 academic year, but the market has also affected our scholarship funds. I know that this financial crisis is affecting everyone so we want to say "thank you" for your continued support through your donations to the FHSU Foundation. We appreciate your support!
The Department's strategic plan and other assessment data are available for viewing on our website. You can go to the homepage and click on the assessment data link or click on the following link to go directly to this information: http://www.fhsu.edu/commdis/assessment.php
We would like to encourage all of you to update your information with the Alumni Association on campus. The Alumni Association may be contacted via the following web site: http://www.fhsu.edu/alumni_friends/
Be sure to stop by and visit the Department anytime you are in the Hays area.
