Join members of our three schools in celebrating the first research week of the newly-merged College of Communication & Information, highlighted by faculty and doctoral research presentations and culminating in a celebratory reception. Wednesday through Friday events will be Webcast; find a link to the Webcasts at the College Web site (http://cci.fsu.edu).

Monday – Faculty publications on display in Goldstein
Time – ALL WEEK
Location – Goldstein

Tuesday – Doctoral Poster Session
Time: 12:00 – 1:00
Location – Goldstein

Wednesday – Colloquia
Speaker: Dr. Michelle Kazmer
Topic: Crossing Boundaries in the iField: Life-cycle Formation & Long-term Scientific Collaboration
Time: 1:00 – 2:00
Location – LSB 206

Thursday – Brown Bag Lunch
Speaker: Dr. Charles McClure
Title: Pulling together and submitting Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) proposals: Worse than herding cats!
Time: 12:00 – 1:00
Location – LSB 206

Friday – Research Colloquia & Reception
Speaker: Leonard LaPointe
Title: Competition, Interference and Distraction in Neurological Diseases: Contributions to Injurious Falls
Time: 12:00-2:00
Location – LSB 006

Dr. Julie A.G. Stierwalt, associate professor in the School of Communication Science & Disorders, was recently named a Fellow by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, one of the highest honors ASHA bestows.

“Our students are so fortunate to have Dr. Stierwalt as a research mentor, professional role model, and teacher,” said Dr. Juliann Woods, director of the School of Communication Science & Disorders. “She exemplifies what the association aims for in its Fellows.”

Stierwalt’s work focuses upon swallowing disorders, motor speech disorders and cognitive linguistic interactions following brain damage. She has published 29 peer-reviewed articles on brain-based disorders and dysphagia in the field’s top-tier journals, written six book chapters and is a co-author of a textbook in press. She has attended 25 scholarly international conferences from Hong Kong and Australia to Dublin and Ghent. Additionally, she has more than 50 presentations at national conferences.

Stierwalt incorporates technology into her teaching and has been instrumental in the expansion of the distance learning program. She has been recognized by the Provost for Excellence in Teaching multiple times and received a University Graduate Teaching Award for the 2006-2007 school year. She consistently gets some of the highest teaching evaluations in the School, both on campus and via distance.

“I am touched and humbled,” Stierwalt said. “Looking at the ASHA list of names of Fellow status is daunting and I am not sure if it has really sunk in yet.”

Only a small percentage of professionals are awarded ASHA Fellow status. For consideration as a Fellow, one must be nominated and co-sponsored by colleagues holding Fellow status with ASHA. Stierwalt joins three other current SCSD faculty members as ASHA Fellows – Dr. Leonard LaPointe, Dr. Kenn Apel, and Dr. Amy Wetherby. LaPointe nominated Stierwalt for the honor. Co-sponsors were Dr. Joseph R. Duffy, head of Speech Pathology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Dr. John C. Rosenbek, professor at University of Florida. All three praised Stierwalt’s ability to blend clinical and academic acumen.

ASHA is the professional, scientific and credentialing association for 135,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language and hearing scientists.

Stierwalt will be recognized at an awards ceremony Nov. 20 during the ASHA Convention in New Orleans. This lifetime status recognizes professional or scientific achievement and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the profession.

Dr. Kenn Apel and students involved in his Research on Orthographic Learning Lab (ROLL) are expanding their research into early indicators of literacy learning risks with a project that investigates children’s eye movement during storybook reading.

For some time, Dr. Apel has been investigating whether young children in the early stages of reading acquire quickly the mental images of written words (mental orthographic representations, or MORs) during storybook reading. Results of his initial studies suggest that kindergarten children quickly acquire some MOR information and that this ability uniquely predicts their reading and spelling skills, above other known contributors.

Other researchers have investigated children’s eye gaze during storybook reading and have found that children devote minimal amount of eye gaze to print. Dr. Apel’s newest project melds these two lines of research by examining both eye gaze and MOR learning during storybook reading tasks in young children.

The project, the result of a $12,000 Council on Research and Creativity planning grant, will include kindergarten children from middle and low socio-economic -status homes, because Dr. Apel’s previous research found differences in MOR learning between these two groups. The hope is that the results of the study will lead to future external funding and, ultimately, to more precise and early identification of children at risk for literacy learning — and earlier and more effective intervention.

Dr. Leonard “Chick” LaPointe, Francis Eppes Professor of Communication Science & Disorders, traveled to Turku, Finland, last fall to present his research on birdsong and human language loss to the annual Academy of Aphasia meeting.

The idea for the research began when Dr. LaPointe was invited to serve on an FSU Neuroscience doctoral student’s committee. Neuroscience researchers had been studying the brain structure related to birdsong in the Australian zebra finch and how the songs were disrupted after surgery. Because the zebra finch acquires song under conditions very much like the ones under which humans acquire language, Dr. LaPointe became intrigued with the possible parallels between loss of birdsong and loss of language.

FSU Neuroscience researchers were also studying surgical procedures that would restore some aspects of birdsong and Dr. LaPointe wondered whether the zebra finch model might have some parallels to the recovery of language in humans. In collaboration with FSU’s Dr. Frank Johnson and the University of Pittsburgh’s Dr. Malcolm McNeil, he began and continues this research.

“It may seem a little far out,”  Dr. LaPointe said,  “but it has possibilities of really better understanding the recovery process of language after stroke.”