Department News and Events

Welcome to the new academic year of 2008-2009! The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders starts the year with some significant changes and anticipates exciting developments.

Mrs Diana Green, who served as the Speech-Language Clinic Coordinator for 15 years and Mrs. Marla Parker, who served as CSD’s secretary for 29 years, both retired in July of this year. We deeply appreciate and are grateful for all their contributions to the department and wish them all the best in the future.

We were very fortunate in finding excellent replacements for them in the persons of Mrs. Ellen Ehrgott, our new SL Clinic Coordinator, and Ms. Angela Thomason, our new Office Support Specialist. Mrs. Ehrgott brings with her nearly 20 years of varied and grounded clinical and professional experience. Ms. Thomason joins us after being with Spoon River College for 13 years where she very efficiently wore many administrative support hats. Th College, CSD faculty, and all our students welcome Mrs. Erghott and Ms. Thomason warmly and look forward to many productive and happy years of collaboration with them.

Our overall undergraduate enrollment is at an all-time high this year and we are back to our usual (albeit lower end of the) range of graduate students at 35. Our searches for a tenure-track faculty and a non-tenure track one are on-going. We commend every CSD faculty member for his/her efforts in recruiting quality personnel at every possible. Advertisements are in full gear and we hope to fill these two positions this coming year.

Speaking of quality, we wish to congratulate Ms Viola Marrs and Dr. Robert Quesal. Viola Marrs was selected as the nominee of the College of Fine Arts and Communication for the Lincoln Laureate Student Award. She will be competing with the nominees from the three other colleges. Dr. Robert Quesal’ s continued scholarly and professional achievements this past year included more journal publications. In addition and quite recently, Dr. Quesal was selected by ASHA to serve at the Council of Academic Accreditation, which is the body that establishes the standards for the CSD professions and determines how well each CSD program in the country complies to these standards for purposes of accreditation. This is indeed a tremendous honor for Dr. Quesal and for the entire university community and we are very proud of him. Accomplishments such as these are solid testaments to the caliber of student and faculty the Department of CSD has.

Hope to see many of you at the ASHA Convention in Chicago this November!