Speech and Hearing Science | Page 9 | College of Applied Health Sciences

Illini 4000 hits home for SHS student

May 28, 2024 | Sam Rink

Illini 4000, started as a theoretical conversation between two Illinois students in 2007 and has since become a massive annual fundraising drive that has raised more than $1.3 million since the first ride more than 15 years ago.

*Personal experiences with cancer spurred a decision by Izzy Perpich, center, to join the Illini 4000. (Photo provided)*

When Izzy Perpich committed to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2021, they were self-admittedly unenthusiastic about attending. However, in their search for points of interest on campus, they discovered a registered student organization that just happened to sit perfectly at the intersection of two of their passions: healthcare and cycling.

Illini 4000, or I4K, started as a theoretical conversation between two Illinois students in 2007 and has since become a massive annual fundraising drive that has raised more than $1.3 million since the first ride more than 15 years ago. I4K is an entirely student-founded and led non-profit focused on raising money and awareness for cancer research through an annual cross-country bike ride.

“It’s definitely something that hits close to home,” Perpich said, recalling their own family members’ battles with different kinds of cancer. “It looked inspiring, beautiful and I just thought, ‘Wow, I really want to be there. I really want to be a part of this.’”

The ride leaves from New York City on May 27 and ends as the team of 18 students crosses the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Aug. 10, covering 4,000 miles through 21 states over 11 weeks. Riders sleep at pre-arranged stops at YMCAs, churches, and campsites, eat the same utilitarian meals (oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and lentils or pasta for dinner), and cover 70 miles on average every day. The experience requires discipline and months of training, but the students who participate have good reasons for doing so.

For Perpich, their inspiration to join the ride came from a few places, but their love of cycling began in their hometown of Chicago, riding the lakefront trail and even becoming a cycling instructor as their very first job. Perpich’s personal experiences with cancer also informed their decision to join I4K.

“I’ve definitely been impacted by cancer in my immediate and extended family,” they said. “Being able to do something so big to help people and also fundraise to serve people and make a real difference is something I was like: ‘Yeah I can’t say no to this.’”

Perpich also discussed their passion for uplifting underrepresented voices in healthcare, a passion which led them to studying in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the College of Applied Health Sciences. They shared some of their experiences working on public health projects with resource centers on campus, saying “a lot of it is like the intersection of queer identities, sexual health and making sure all people have a space and a voice, and that goes for any type of healthcare.”

Perpich said their time in public health made them feel satisfied that “fundraising through Illini 4000 is going directly to different beneficiaries that we [I4K] have spoken to firsthand and knowing that their mission is to improve the experiences of people regardless of their identity, orientation, or any other factors like that.”

Being able to do something so big to help people and also fundraise to serve people and make a real difference is something I was like: ‘Yeah I can’t say no to this.’

Izzy Perpich

SHS student

Perpich’s goals to better represent the underprivileged in healthcare were another part of their decision to join I4K, which doesn’t only focus on their yearly ride and fundraising. The group also collects and manages a gallery of stories of people who have or still are battling cancer called The Portraits Project. Members interview cancer patients, survivors, and families of those who have died from cancer and document their stories to be posted on their website where anyone can read them.

“It’s been really moving to hear firsthand some of the experiences,” Perpich said. “Often the people we speak with have so much to share and it can really bring you to tears.”

The training regimen for a 4,000-mile bike ride is as intense as one might expect, starting in the fall semester with weekly running and calisthenics training before cycling officially begins in March. The cyclists ride up to 90 miles in one training session, training in all conditions and terrains.
“It was a lot of fun ascending and descending on the massive hills at Kickapoo [State Park]—that’s where we just did training for switching gears and learning how to flutter our breaks so that we could learn how to do that for more hilly areas in the country.”

Long-distance exercise requires both physical and mental fortitude, but Perpich said the close-knit nature of the team makes the long rides manageable.

“It’s really special when you can bond with another person on your team and ride next to people, because when you’re talking it honestly feels like the time just flies by,” they said. “I feel like it’s just more of those human connection conversations that allow for the easiest and best experiences with a long-distance ride.”

Illini 4000 is not only an emotionally intimate experience for its members, but also an inspiring one. When an entirely student-run group can raise as much money as I4K has, it has an immense impact on the participants as well as the recipients, which Perpich reflected on.

“It’s really empowering for us just to know that, as students we can have such a huge impact,” they said. “We have power as students. We are members of society that are capable of making massive change.”

Tags: College of Applied Health Sciences, Izzy Perpich, SHS Fall Newsletter 2024

Long-time RST faculty member Espeseth remembered for work and friendship

May 22, 2024 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

*Bob Espeseth was an RST faculty member for three decades (Photo provided)*

It’s no surprise that a man who was as outgoing as Bob Espeseth dedicated his life to creating opportunities for others to be outdoors.

“When we grew up, we were always doing stuff, always camping a lot, being outdoors,” said Robert Espeseth, one of Bob’s five children with wife Mary Anne. “That was just us. Part of the trips was to get to see the country … we got to grow up seeing a lot of the parks and a lot of the country and different things.

“He was always happy to meet everybody. He went out of his way when he traveled to look up people and stop in and visit, or at the very least call when he was in the area.”

Espeseth, who was a faculty member in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at Illinois from 1973-95, died on Dec. 15, 2023 at the age of 93.

Espeseth grew up in Wisconsin and earned a degree in landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin, all while serving in the ROTC. Espeseth’s ROTC commitment sent him into the Navy, where he was on active duty for three years. He was an ensign in the Navy when he was the films officer for the USS Purdy, a destroyer that traveled around the world to provide support in the Korean War.

“After he got out of the Navy, he went back and got his master’s degree, and then he started working for the Wisconsin parks system,” son Robert said. “He was instrumental in developing and modernizing a lot of the Wisconsin State Parks, the rails to trails.”

Espeseth also worked in parks administration in Michigan before coming to the University of Illinois, where he was a professor of leisure studies. Colleagues remembered him as warm and helpful.

“He was kind and fun-loving. He was very quick to laugh. Most of my memories are I would go for a run in the morning and he and Mary Ann would walk from their house on Healy Street down to Prospect Avenue.”
RST faculty member Kim Shinew

“And they were standing in front of this tree on Healy one day. And just something about it made me stop, which was unusual. When I run, I usually don’t stop. I stopped, and he said, ‘Do you know what kind of tree this is? And I said, ‘I have no idea, Bob. And he said, ‘It’s a ginkgo tree. They lose their leaves in one day.’ And he said, ‘Long after I’m not around, when you go by this tree, you think of me. And I always have. I always just thought of him when I ever go by that tree.”

In addition to his academic endeavors, Espeseth volunteered for more than 45 years for the Champaign County Forest Preserve District, first as an elected official and later as a foundation board member. His volunteer work and philanthropic endeavors played a significant role in establishing and caring for nearly 4,000 acres of preserves, the Museum of the Grand Prairie, and the Kickapoo Rail Trail.

“He knew the important role that public parks and places like forest preserves, the role that they play in overall life satisfaction and quality of life and places of exercise,” Shinew said. “I know that he really valued and appreciated the outdoors. He was an advocate for that in communities.”

“When I came and Bill McKinney was the (RST) department head, Bill’s area was public parks and recreation. Bob played a big role in that.”

Even now, Shinew said, the connection between landscape architecture and community planning and engagement—two other significant RST industry fields—is significant, a testament to Espeseth’s pioneering work.

Espeseth was also, not surprisingly, an advocate for environmental causes and helped to launch the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, which support coastal, marine and Great Lakes communities through research, extension and education. The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, one of 34 Sea Grants in the United States, is focused on the southern Lake Michigan region—104 miles of heavily urbanized and industrialized shoreline in Illinois and Indiana. Espeseth was at the helm of IISG from 1982 through 1994.

But family and greenspace were really Espeseth’s loves. He was part of the National Parks and Recreation Association, and thanks to that, he took his family on many trips.

“We stopped at every state park and national park in the country,” Robert said. “Well, he would pose us, all of us—my brothers and I—in front of the sign to the park, the entrance to the park to take a picture of the entrance. Part of it was he wanted this file of information, but then he also could use it as family pictures. We used to joke that our father has the best collection of park entrances and bathrooms, because he’d always shoot the restroom facilities, how they were designed, how they were landscaped with natural stone or other things.

“So we’re posed in front of stuff, whether it was in Yosemite, whether it was Yellowstone, whether it was in Grand Teton, whether it was in Craters of the Moon Park, you name it. We used to joke he has the most amazing collection of bathroom pictures in the United States.

“That was how practical and frugal he was.”

Tags: RST Newsletter Spring 2024

AHS Get to Know: Laura Mattie, Ph.D.

April 03, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

Laura Mattie joined the College of Applied Health Sciences in 2015. She leads the Development in Neurogenetic Disabilities Lab, or “DND” Lab.

How would you describe your primary research interests?

My primary research interest is learning how young children with neurodevelopmental disabilities develop early social and communication skills to inform parent-implemented early language interventions.

Why did you decide to apply to work at Illinois?

I applied to Illinois because it was one of the only job postings that targeted expertise in children with disabilities and family well-being, which signified that my work was already valued.

What are you working on right now?

I have 4 main projects right now:

The Power of the Point Project focuses on the predictors of early language development in toddlers with Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome.
ASD Screening Tools in Down Syndrome is a large-scale survey of caregivers of individuals 6-18 years old that aims to determine how to best use autism screening tools for this population.
The Speech Accessibility Project aims to make voice recognition technology useful for individuals who may have diverse speech patterns and disabilities, including people with Down syndrome.
A Foundational Study of Adaptive Behaviors in Individuals with Down Syndrome is a survey of caregivers to learn about the practical, conceptual, and social skills used in everyday life by their children with Down syndrome who are between birth to 22 years old.

What’s a fun fact you’d like to share about yourself?

I am a twin mom to 15-month-old girls, so much of my free time is chasing after them! When I do have some down time, I enjoy rewatching TV shows like “The Office” and “Parks & Recreation,” reading, and snuggling with our dogs.

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.

Tags: Get To Know, Laura Mattie

Service to the profession marks John J. O’Neill’s legacy in Speech and Hearing Science

Aug. 22, 2023 | Bruce Adams

John O’Neill is credited with playing “a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science” at Illinois
(Illinois archives)

The Department of Speech and Hearing Science’s history of cultivating a spirit of leadership through mentoring and service to the profession owes much to John J. O’Neill.

O’Neill interviewed to chair the Division of Speech and Hearing Science in the Department of Speech at the 1958 American Speech and Hearing Association convention in New York. Already known for his expertise in clinical psychology and rehabilitative audiology, O’Neill left Ohio State University for Illinois in 1959, where, as the new division chair, he instilled the expectation that faculty and students would match his dedication to service. Upon his hiring, O’Neill was charged with further integrating the speech and audiology areas, developing the graduate program, obtaining grants and centralizing the department under one roof. He tackled all this as he widened the department’s contributions to speech and hearing programs across Illinois and beyond. Department faculty, graduate students and undergraduates contributed to training, clinical work and the efforts of professional associations at the local, state and national levels.

In his obituary, published by the News-Gazette on July 5, 2009, O’Neill was described as having “played a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois to its current status as the nationally ranked Department of Speech and Hearing Science and served as the first head of the department from 1973 to 1979.” O’Neill published more than 80 journal articles and technical reports and was the author or co-author of four textbooks. Although he retired in 1991, O’Neill remained active in SHS, serving for years as the department’s format checker for theses and dissertations.

In a 2010 tribute at the Annual John J. O’Neill Lecture, Tanya Gallagher, a former dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences and an alumna of SHS, called O’Neill a “highly respected researcher whose landmark work advanced the field of aural rehabilitation, a skilled administrator who built one of the leading speech and hearing science programs in the nation and helped our national association take its place as one of the major scientific and professional organizations.”

Gallagher—who received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from SHS, said, “Dr. O’Neill had attracted some of the brightest thinkers of our field to this program, and the intellectual vitality within the small white house that housed the program then [the old Lorado Taft house] was palpable and energizing. It was the place to be, where it was happening, and we knew it even then.”

Another SHS alumna, Judith LeDuc, had a similar feeling about O’Neill.

“I first met John O’Neill when I came to interview him about the Speech Science Program at Illinois. I walked into his office, and there he was, with his feet resting on his desk. I thought, ‘My kind of guy!’”

LeDuc, who got her master’s degree in 1971, went on to work as a speech-language pathologist at the University of Illinois Medical Center and developed both outpatient and inpatient hospital-based pediatric programs, as well as a private practice.

“I was interested in child language, and he assured me that the faculty at Illinois brought a wealth of knowledge and research to the program,” said LeDuc, who has also been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, Rush Medical Center and DePaul University. “He was passionate about the field, dedicated to serving, and somehow was always able to hold the department together, as faculty and students paraded through.”

John Deck, who got his master’s and Ph.D. from Illinois, credited O’Neill for his guidance and direction and said O’Neill encouraged him to take a job as a speech pathologist at the Danville VA Medical Center in Illinois. Through the years at Danville, more than 500 graduate and doctoral students from the division (and later, department) of SHS gained clinical experience. O’Neill was Deck’s Ph.D. advisor, and, as Deck said, “We would discuss important legislation affecting funding for the profession. Conversations Dr. O’Neill and I had about legislation struck close to home … During our discussions, I discovered that no one among the Big Ten schools in speech and hearing did more to help create traineeships for graduate students than John J. O’Neill. So many of us have benefited from his efforts and his legacy.”

O’Neill and Deck, who later worked at Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, worked to secure traineeships with stipends for speech-language-pathology and audiology students.

O’Neill was also a pioneer in forming the Illinois Speech and Hearing Association in February 1960, and he was a co-founder in 1966 and past president of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, which helped establish the department’s national reputation in that area. In 1969, he served as president of ASHA. He was a charter member of the Council on Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, a member of numerous ASHA committees and boards, and ultimately a recipient of ASHA’s Honors of the Association in 1979.

O’Neill’s activity with these associations transferred to his students and colleagues as well. LeDuc, for example, said O’Neill “encouraged us to attend Illinois Speech and Hearing Association meetings, as well as ASHA annual meetings. It was soon after graduate school that I began to serve on ASHA’s legislative council, and ISHA’s program and local arrangements committees. My work on ASHA’s boards and councils continued for more than 40 years. For most of my career, I served the underserved. It was that O’Neill voice in my head.”

The SHS faculty today continue in that spirit. Faculty serve on committees within ASHA, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation and the Acoustical Society of America. They are officers in the Eastern Illinois Speech-Language Hearing Association and the Illini Chapter of the Illinois Association of the Deaf, and they serve on Advisory Boards of the Illinois State Board of Education, the American Tinnitus Association and the National Down Syndrome Society, among others.

“As we celebrate the department’s history and the contributions of its pioneering faculty, we also affirm our commitment to giving back to the community, serving the professions, and honoring the legacy of those who came before us,” said Department Head Pamela Hadley.

Tags: John O’Neill, SHS at 50

Student Spotlight: Kaley Graves, from patient to practitioner

Aug. 22, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Audiology wasn’t initially Graves’ field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology

Third-year audiology doctoral student Kaley Graves is missing the first week of classes this fall, but she has a great excuse.

Thanks to her sterling accomplishments as a budding audiologist, she’s on an all-expenses-paid trip to visit one of the premier hearing aid manufacturers in the world: Oticon’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“I had to reread that email six times to make sure it said ‘Denmark’ and not ‘Denver, Colorado,’ or something,” Graves said. It’ll be her first time out of the United States.

Earlier this year, Graves was selected as one of six recipients of the American Academy of Audiology Foundation’s Empowering Student Scholarship, sponsored by Oticon and awarded to students who show “exceptional promise” as future clinical audiologists.

“I have hearing aids in both ears, so I’ve been the patient my entire life,” Graves said. “Now I’m on the other side of the booth and can be the clinician, which I think is so fun.”

Graves grew up in Monticello, Ill., a half-hour drive from the University of Illinois campus. Audiology wasn’t initially her field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

That career path didn’t fit, but Graves found her way into intriguing research projects that focused on hearing and visual cues. One of her undergraduate mentors encouraged her to apply for a behavioral neuroscience position at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, also in Springfield, where she studied the development of tinnitus in lab rats.

Graves went on to perform hearing research for a decade, but she craved more human connection on the job. A suggestion from her own doctor set Graves on her current course.

“I was admittedly kind of a pain in the butt to my current audiologist about all the things that she was constantly doing to my hearing aids and all of the things that she would do on a daily basis with her patients,” Graves said.

“And she eventually was like: ‘You should probably just get into this field. You’ve already got the hearing background, go deal with people—it’s more fun.” Graves’ mother was especially encouraging of her daughter’s new career path. When her parents first discovered their child had hearing loss, “it was terrifying,” Graves said.

“[My mom] said for patients, especially families that have young kids who are finding out their child has a hearing loss, it’s going to be huge for them to see their doctor has a hearing loss and can be successful in life.”

Today, Graves keeps busy as president of the Student Academy of Audiology chapter at Illinois. The registered student organization doubles as a networking site for SHS students and an outreach arm for the department.

A few events they’ve taken on: Hearing safety stand-ups at the Urbana’s Market at the Square, free hearing screenings in the SHS building, and recently, cerumen (earwax) removals for the ClarkLindsey Village retirement community.

Especially for older adults, earwax buildups can be a primary cause of muffled hearing, Graves said. Graves and another member of her graduate cohort cleared residents’ ears while a handful of first-year students in the audiology program cleaned their hearing aids.

“Being able to do a minimal amount of work over two hours to improve their quality of life was huge,” Graves said. “So many people left that room super happy.”

Her audiology work extends to Illinois’ student population as well. Graves has booked a hearing safety presentation in the fall for the student bandmates of the Marching Illini.

“The first thing that I’m really going to try and drive home to them is to please wear ear plugs when you’re out and constantly practicing,” Graves said. “We were taught first year what the acceptable levels of noise exposure are over X amount of time. If they’re out practicing for four hours and it’s about 90 decibels, they need to do something to mitigate the effects of those loud noises.”

For now, though, Graves is preparing her Denmark itinerary: visiting Tivoli Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, and seeing the Danish Crown Jewels. “I’m super excited to go be a tourist,” she said.

Of course, she’s ready for her Oticon visit. “They do a lot of innovation, they do a lot of workshops, they do a lot of Ph.D. student type-things,” Graves said. “I am just really, really fascinated by what I’m going to see behind the scenes at their research center.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.

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Tags: alumni, Kaley Graves

Study: Hearing aids may slow cognitive decline for at-risk adults

July 21, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

The study analyzed cognitive performance for groups of older adults (ages 70 to 84) with untreated hearing loss

A new study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that hearing aids might slow cognitive decline for at-risk older adults with hearing loss.

Sadie Braun, audiologist and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, said she’ll incorporate these findings into her counseling with patients.

“For people who have any sort of high risk for cognitive decline such as dementia (or) Alzheimer’s, this study tells us that those individuals should get hearing aids as soon as they need them,” Braun said. “The average person waits 5 to 7 years or more to get hearing aids once they know they have a hearing loss.”

The study, co-led by Dr. Frank Lin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, analyzed cognitive performance for groups of older adults (ages 70 to 84) with untreated hearing loss.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the control group that received counseling on disease prevention, or to the intervention group, which received regular audiology treatment and hearing aids.

Researchers followed up with participants every six months for three years. For participants at lower risk of cognitive decline, hearing aid interventions showed no significant effect on cognitive function. But for participants with high risk for dementia, cognitive decline slowed by 48 percent over the three-year period.

“That’s a pretty amazing statistic to me,” Braun said. “We’ve known there was a correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline, but there were a lot of unknowns regarding the exact nature of that correlation as well as whether hearing aids or other treatments could have a positive impact.”

The connection between hearing loss and dementia is well-documented, but the “why” is still up for research inquiry, Braun said. Regardless, the finding adds to the growing list of reasons for adults to check their hearing sooner rather than later.

Long-term speech understanding can improve the earlier a patient uses hearing aids, Braun said.

“Cognitive health is something that people really care about,” Braun said. “I think this is going to cause more people to be more concerned about a mild or moderate hearing loss.”

For at-risk adults and anyone interested in checking their hearing, Braun recommends a visit to an audiologist.

The Audiology and Speech Language Pathology Clinic at 2001 S. Oak Street in Champaign is open to all patients, regardless of affiliation to the University of Illinois and accepts some insurance plans. It is operated by the College of Applied Health Sciences’ Department of Speech and Hearing Science.

New patients are required to schedule an appointment by calling 217-333-2205 or emailing shsclinic@illinois.edu.

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.

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Tags: Sadie Braun

Students bring volunteer force to ‘Medfest’

May 22, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

MedFest was set up to provide free medical screenings for Special Olympics athletes.

*A small team of student audiologists-in-training conducted hearing examinations for nearly 100 athletes (Photo provided)*

The stage was set at Wintrust Sports Complex in the Village of Bedford Park—a suburb of Chicago—when nearly 600 Special Olympics athletes from across the state began to stream in.

With the help of a substantial volunteer staff, including more than 25 students from the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, many of the athletes left the facility ready to play.

As part of the 22nd annual “MedFest” event, hundreds descended on Bedford Park to help athletes from Special Olympics Illinois receive their physical certifications to compete in the state.

In the most recent edition, hosted on Nov. 30, students from the Departments of Speech and Hearing Science and Recreation, Sport and Tourism took time out of their fall break from classes to help the event run smoothly.

A small team of student audiologists-in-training conducted hearing examinations for nearly 100 athletes, while 15 RST students helped from the event management side, signing in the athletes and directing them to the right locations.

“You can tell that they got so comfortable and were having a blast, talking with athletes and interacting with them,” said Melissa Garritano, senior director of Special Olympics Illinois region D, which covers the Chicagoland area. “Thinking back to when I was at the U. of I., I wish I would’ve done stuff like this. They drove up two hours to spend the day with us—the athletes loved them.”

The connection stemmed from Bedford Park’s budding partnership with the College of AHS. The Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism has a grant with the Village of Bedford Park, which heavily invested in the Wintrust Sports Complex. The project-heavy facility hosts community events on a regular basis, atop of its normal sports operations.

Joe Ronovsky, chief business officer of Village of Bedford Park, is a two-time RST graduate. He saw that the complex could serve as a real-world “lab setting” for community engagement projects led by RST faculty and students.

“Frankly, it’s kind of a one-stop shop, and it’s an opportunity for me as a teacher to show how all these things interact with each other,” said RST Clinical Associate Professor Michael Raycraft.

MedFest was set up to provide free medical screenings for Special Olympics athletes. Wintrust Sports Complex at Bedford Park began partnering with Special Olympics Illinois about a year and a half ago.

“Their facility is unbelievable,” Garritano said. She met Raycraft through their common connections to the Wintrust Complex.

Nicole Dudek, a junior in the RST program, was taken aback by the organizational strength and scale of the event. She started her day at MedFest positioned at the height and weight station, an entry point for many of the athletes.

When students showed up around 8:30 a.m., the Special Olympics staff had the gear and answers: nametags, T-shirts, and where each student would be working within the complex.

“From the event management side of things, you could tell how well-run this event was start to finish,” Dudek said. “It helped to have such a large open space and so many volunteers, and everyone worked well together with the sole goal to help these students get their necessary medical certifications.”

The “noisy, upbeat” energy of the event bolstered the volunteer experience for RST senior Carson Bounds.

“As you could imagine, with 450 kids taking a field trip to a large indoor sport facility during a school day, they all were quite excited to be there,” Bounds said.

Third-year audiology student Yadira Espinoza appreciated the pre-event workshop on how to work with a special needs population.

“Since it was a Special Olympics event, it was important for us to know what to expect; that every kid will be different depending on their needs and accommodations,” she said.

The athletes—ranging from elementary schoolers to full-grown adults—had a variety of responses to the hearing tests. Espinoza used her bilingual fluency to help some of the families who only spoke Spanish, she said.

“These opportunities are very important because they provide more or confirm what we learn in the classroom. It’s different to work with someone who may have Down syndrome or a speech delay; seeing it firsthand really makes a difference and puts you in a situation to put your critical thinking in place,” she said.

*Students from RST and SHS teamed up at MedFast (Photo provided)*

SHS audiology students are regular volunteers in the community, typically getting out for a handful of outreach events per semester, such as a recent visit to the ClarkLindsey retirement community in Urbana.

Clinical associate professor Sadie Braun supervised the audiology students in the volunteer event. Seeing her students persist with the athletes who didn’t respond right away to testing made the experience worthwhile.

“The athlete got this sense of pride when they were doing what we were asking them to do,” Braun said.

“It was awesome and unique to bring the U of I [audiology] crew up,” Garritano added. “Some of those athletes they got to see may have never had a hearing test in their life.”

Ronovsky thanked Raycraft and Village of Bedford Park President David Brady for tying together all the stakeholders in November’s event.

“Seeing the large group of RST and Speech and Hearing Science students volunteering at MedFest really tied together the meaning of community we’re trying to build at the Wintrust Sports Complex, in Bedford Park and throughout the state of Illinois,” Ronovsky said. “These Illini students are the next leaders in our communities.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.

Tags: Mike Raycraft, RST Newsletter Spring 2024, Students

The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic is now Medicare-certified

July 15, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic at the University of Illinois, located at 2001 S. Oak St. in Champaign, was recently certified to provide services for patients covered by Medicare. To expand on this exciting change, The College of Applied Health Sciences spoke with Rabel Lohana, the clinic’s practice manager. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

*A clinician speaks with a patient at the Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic, which is now Medicare-certified. (Photo by Brian Stauffer)*

Q: Could you explain in your own words what this Medicare certification means for the clinic?

The Medicare status change aligns perfectly with our clinic’s mission to provide accessible and high-quality health care to our community. By becoming Medicare certified, we can now serve a broader segment of our population, particularly older adults and those with disabilities, and ensuring that everyone has access to the medical care they need. So that’s the most important thing for us, that we are able to complete and fully accomplish the mission that the clinic runs with.

Q: Does this change mean that more people in the community can access the clinic’s services than before?

Absolutely. We can extend our services to Medicare beneficiaries who may have previously faced barriers to accessing care at our clinic because we were not Medicare certified. So this means a significant portion of our community, especially older adults, will now have more options for their health care needs.

Q: Has this change already taken effect, or is there still some time until these people can access the clinic?

It takes effect immediately. We are accepting Medicare patients and provide them with full range of services our clinic offers. We are good to go.

Q: For those who have never even heard of the clinic or been around it before, could you describe how the clinic functions and the people that are running it?

It’s a teaching facility, so we have students in our clinic. They are supervised by our ASHA-certified clinicians. We have staff members, me as practice manager, and a clinic business specialist who takes care of our billing, our pre-authorization for insurances. We have five SLPs and one audiologist right now. It’s a teaching facility. We provide a great experience for our students, a learning experience. But they are always supervised by our clinicians.

Q: For the students, how do you think this Medicare certification will affect their learning? What kind of opportunities do you think it’s going to afford them?

This change significantly enhances student opportunities to apply their learning in real-world scenarios. With a broader patient base, students will have the chance to encounter a wide variety of medical conditions and treatment scenarios. This will allow specifically seeing the older population that they were not able to see when we were not Medicare certified, which is invaluable for their education and professional development.

Q: Are you anticipating an increase in how many people are coming by to schedule appointments because of this change?

Yes, we do anticipate an increase in utilization of our services. We have a few patients on the waitlist in audiology and a few clients in speech-language pathology services, and we have scheduled them. And we do expect to see the increased flow of that population at our clinic.

Q: For people that are interested in using these services, how can they find out whether they’re eligible to use the clinic, whether they’re on Medicare or not?

We will be updating probably our website with that information. They can go to our clinic website, shsclinic.shs.illinois.edu, and look at the insurances we accept. And Medicare is one of those.

Along with that, we are trying to do some of our outreach events, where we would be educating our community by letting them know that this is what now we are accepting. Also, we do appreciate people calling us and knowing more about the services and the insurance benefits that they can get from a clinic. We are open to accept a variety of insurances. Please call us and find out at (217) 333-2205.

Tags: AHS Newsletter Fall 2024, Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Clinic, Rabel Lohana, SHS, SHS Fall Newsletter 2024

Fairbanks and Paden brought rigor to ASHA journals and credibility to SHS

June 03, 2023 | Bruce Adams

Elaine Pagel Paden co-wrote the first book on phonological approaches to treatment for highly unintelligible children
(Photo provided)

From Johnson to Fairbanks,
Yes, let us all shout.
We now can forget
What semantic’s about…

For mere words and bandiage,
We’ll now take advantage
Of dials and meters
And stuff.

ASHA’s First Journal

This ode, written by D.W. Morris and quoted in Elaine Pagel Paden’s book “History of the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1925-1958,” was an introduction to Grant Fairbanks when he was selected as the third editor of the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders in 1948 (succeeding Wendell Johnson). It was the field’s first professional/scientific journal and the only journal of the American Speech and Hearing Association. Before Fairbanks’ tenure as editor, the journal had resembled, in part, a newsletter or trade journal for the nascent association and field more than the top-quality scientific journal he envisioned. All that was about to change.

Fairbanks was named professor of speech and director of a new Speech Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois in 1948. The laboratory gained renown for technical research, and students earned the first doctoral degrees in speech and hearing science bestowed by Illinois, going on to significantly influence the field.

Whereas previous editors of JSHD were clinicians, Fairbanks, an expert in experimental phonetics, was the first research scientist to serve as editor. As such, he brought to the journal an ironclad devotion to science and determination to make it a rigorous scholarly publication and solidify ASHA as a credible organization. In her book, Paden noted the “razor-sharp intellect of Grant Fairbanks slashing directly at the core of the issue” during discussions at association business meetings. Fairbanks and his colleague Raymond Carhart were described as “clear-headed organizers” for the association’s new membership plan in 1950 and “forceful representatives of the research scientists and the audiologists, respectively.” This matched Fairbanks’ drive at Illinois as a teacher, researcher and mentor. The national impact and profile of the newly minted Department of Speech increased considerably after World War II, thanks in large part to his work and that of colleagues such as Paden.

As editor of JSHD, Fairbanks immediately shared the journal’s editorial work with a staff of five associate editors. Their work became truly editorial, aiding authors in crafting articles and carefully screening submissions to maintain a standard of excellence. Paden joined the editorial staff in 1949. The journal found its scholarly voice, based on what SHS Associate Professor Emerita Cynthia Johnson Parsons called, “a backbone of science.” With its headquarters at the University of Illinois, the university provided staff financial and logistical support for the journal, expanding the Department of Speech’s influence in speech and hearing science.

Fairbanks and Paden

Fairbanks brought prior experience as a consulting or associate editor for the Quarterly Journal of Speech and other journals to his editorial position at JSHD, which he held from 1949-54. In 1955, he received ASHA’s Honors of the Association for his exemplary service and high-quality research, a testament to his crucial role in the association and the profession. Among his many accomplishments, Fairbanks was famous for his widely used textbook, “Voice and Articulation Drillbook, Second Edition,” published in 1960 by Harper and Row. Fairbanks left Illinois in 1962 to take a director of research position in California. Parsons summarized Fairbanks’ leadership at the journal and Illinois as “a powerful force as we grew our field from scratch.”

Paden served on the editorial staff of JSHD for Fairbanks’ entire tenure as editor. She joined the Illinois faculty in 1952, working in phonetics and phonology and serving as acting head of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science from 1979-81. At Illinois, Paden was a forerunner in child phonology and its extension to intervention for speech disorders, helping preschoolers acquire speech sounds. Her work influenced clinical education in communication sciences and disorders at many of the top university programs throughout the country. Paden also helped establish the annual Midwestern Child Phonology Conference (now the International Child Phonology Conference) and interviewed pioneers in the field for ASHA’s archives and her 1970 book.

SHS Professor Emeritus Ehud Yairi said, “Paden pioneered research in normal child phonological development as well as in clinical methods applied to child phonological disorders.” He noted that she developed the earliest course dedicated to the topic. “Her work greatly altered the traditional concept of ‘articulation disorders,” he said.

Later, in collaboration with her former student, Professor Barbara Williams Hodson, Paden wrote the first book on phonological approaches to treatment for highly unintelligible children. Hodson and Paden’s “Targeting Intelligible Speech: A Phonological Approach to Remediation, Second Edition (1991)” has had a far-reaching and enduring impact. In the preface, the authors thanked Grant Fairbanks, writing that his “teaching and research have had a lasting influence on our thinking.”

In the early 1980s, Parsons was on faculty with Paden. “I used this book all the years I taught SHS 430 Development and Disorders of Phonology and Articulation, from Elaine’s retirement until my last semester of teaching before my own retirement, in the spring of 2021,” Parsons said.

Yairi first met Paden at the 1976 ASHA convention in Houston, when she interviewed him for his faculty position at Illinois.

“As I gradually built and expanded my research work into the Illinois International Stuttering Research Program, Elaine joined us and became an important member of the team,” Yairi said, adding that they co-authored several scientific articles and book chapters on the relation between stuttering and phonological disorders.

In 1993, Paden received both the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of Iowa and Honors of the Association from ASHA, the highest award in the field.

From One Journal to Many

At its 1957 convention, ASHA’s Executive Council decided to split the content of JSHD into two journals, retaining JSHD and founding a new journal, the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. JSHR was devoted to basic research in speech and hearing processes, while JSHD focused on clinical research. The first issue of JSHR was published in March 1958. It included “Effects of Delayed Auditory Feedback Upon Articulation,” written by Fairbanks and Newman Guttman, a researcher at Bell Laboratories who got his Ph.D. at Illinois. Subsequent issues of JSHR were filled with articles written by and with scholarly attribution to department graduates.

The two journals were merged into one in 1991 under the JSHR title, with the name changed to The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research in 1997. There are six significant journals in speech and hearing sciences now—including The American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and the American Journal of Audiology—no doubt a reflection of Fairbanks’ and Paden’s impact on ASHA’s first journal, with their firm commitment to straightforward facts, accuracy and scientific detail.

“I was a graduate student when the decision was made to consolidate JSHD and JSHR and create two new publications to disseminate work with direct clinical relevance,” said Professor and SHS Department Head Pamela Hadley. “These journals showcased cutting-edge clinical research studies and experimented with exciting and highly readable new formats such as tutorials and expert opinions. AJSLP and AJA remain critically important today for introducing best practices to graduate students and helping practicing clinicians stay up to date.”

In her book, Paden wrote “one of the chief reasons for the existence of a professional or learned society is the sharing of knowledge in the field among its members.” With the launch of its first journal, “not only was the status of the association notably increased, but its membership rolls began an accelerated upward surge which must be attributed, at least in part, to the reputation of the journal.“

In its 50th anniversary year, the Department of Speech and Hearing Science is proud to claim a seminal role in the establishment of the journals in the field, through the hard work and dedication of its pioneering faculty, Professors Fairbanks and Paden.

Tags: Elaine Pagel Paden, Grant Fairbanks, SHS at 50

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