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

By Susan Sigman
FSU Foundation

The Delta Zeta Sorority at The Florida State University has announced the creation of a $25,000 endowment that will benefit the School of Communication Science & Disorders’ L.L. Schendel Speech and Hearing Clinic. Delta Zeta will donate the money over a five-year period, contributing $5,000 each year.

“This endowment represents a significant contribution to the Schendel Clinic and will help support our clinical training and community outreach efforts,” said Dr. Juliann Woods, director of the School of Communication Science & Disorders. “We serve clients of all ages and backgrounds with various types of communication delays and disorders, so a gift of this size will have a tremendous impact on the clinic’s ability to better serve the community.”

The Delta Zeta Endowment for the Speech & Hearing Impaired will help fund support group meetings for families of children receiving services at the clinic and will make available assistive listening devices to Florida State students with hearing impairments. Additionally, to help raise awareness of the clinic’s services, the endowment will provide resources to create educational material targeting the university and local community. 

“Since our national philanthropic partnerships focus on speech and hearing related causes, we felt establishing this endowment was the perfect fit,” said Dalisha Herring, Delta Zeta collegiate chapter director, Alpha Sigma Chapter. “This is a partnership that we have worked to rekindle over the past few years, and we are excited to have the opportunity to create this endowment with the FSU Foundation that will provide much-needed funding assistance for programs of the clinic.”

To make a contribution or receive additional information about the Delta Zeta Endowment for the Speech & Hearing Impaired, please contact Sterling Garcia, College of Communication & Information director of development, at (850) 644-1364 or sterling.garcia@cci.fsu.edu.

The Florida State University Foundation, Inc. enhances the academic vision and priorities of FSU through its organized fundraising activities and funds management. The Foundation, a non-profit corporation established in 1960, is governed by an elected Board of Trustees, whose members serve as advocates for the university, its colleges, schools and programs.

Scottish Rite is sponsoring a fish fry from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, to benefit the L.L. Schendel Speech and Hearing Clinic operated by FSU’s School of Communication Science & Disorders.

Proceeds will be used for clinic scholarships, which cover fees for children’s therapy as well as tuition at Communication Camp in the summer.

The fish fry will be held at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 5500 N. Monroe St., across from Lake Jackson. The lodge is just south of Capital Circle Northwest.

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.”