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 Nancy A. Creaghead, professor and head of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Cincinnati, has significantly influenced the profession of speech-language pathology through her contributions in the area of child language and literacy and her leadership in regional, state, and national associations. Creaghead also leads an academic program that is "a model for clinical training and research excellence in our discipline," said Wayne Secord of Ohio State University.
Creaghead (BA, Denison University; MS, Purdue University; PhD, University of Cincinnati) is one of the first Board-recognized specialists in child language. Her research has focused on a range of child language issues: pragmatics, communication scripts, school discourse, literacy, treatment efficacy, and collaborative classroom service delivery. Creaghead "builds bridges across theoretical perspective, scientific enclaves, and research-to-practice contributors," noted Nickola Wolf Nelson of Western Michigan University, and has advanced the field "to a more integrated picture of speech, language, and literacy." Creaghead's scholarly efforts include 43 publications, 135 refereed papers and presentations, and more than 250 invited lectures and workshops.
Colleagues praise Creaghead for two efforts in particular. In "Contrasting Perspectives," an article in Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools on the volatile subject of controversial language interventions, Creaghead "called for a fair appraisal of the approaches, set a high ethical standard, and asked us to consider how each intervention could advance the field," said Judy Montgomery of Chapman University. "She was willing to tackle big issues and align the profession with a bold, yet defensible position." Creaghead received a 1999 ASHA Editors Award for the article.
As ASHA vice president for professional practices in speech-language pathology, Creaghead initiated the development of Roles and Responsibilities of Speech-Language Pathologists With Respect to Reading and Writing in Children and Adolescents, a 2000 document that "is a testament to her superb collaborative skills," Montgomery said.
Creaghead has excelled in leadership roles for more than 30 years. She served as ASHA president in 2002, in editorial positions for several journals, on the Legislative Council, and on several committees. She also served as president of the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders. In Ohio, she served as president of and received Honors from both the state and a regional association.
Creaghead also served on an ASHA-Council of Graduate Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders joint task force on academic accreditation. "Her insight and ability to mediate between divergent views were essential" to developing recommendations that changed the structure and direction of academic accreditation," said committee chair Kenneth Moll of the University of Iowa. She also helped facilitate the structural change and chaired the new Council on Academic Accreditation. "Without her efforts, this major change would not have been possible," Moll said.
Creaghead's 36 years at the University of Cincinnati include 28 as department chair. "She has developed innovative programs at the master's and doctoral levels that are recognized as national models of excellence," noted Secord, "and through these academic initiatives, she has mentored a number of prominent leaders in the field." She developed one of the leading distance-learning programs, the result of a collaborative effort within and outside Ohio to address critical professional issues such as personnel shortages.
Creaghead is "known as a consensus-builder," said Nicholas Bankson, professor emeritus at James Madison University, "and as a person who helps everyone feel their efforts are worthwhile and significant. I can think of no other professional who has evidenced the breadth and depth of contributions to professional organization in the field of speech and hearing."
 Judith S. Gravel, director of the Center for Childhood Communication at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has significantly influenced clinical audiology practice through her research, teaching, and years of service to the discipline of communication sciences and disorders. Pediatric audiologists look to Gravel, a recognized authority on childhood hearing loss, "for vision, passion, direction, and leadership," said Fred Bess of Vanderbilt University.
An innovative researcher and teacher, Gravel (BA, MA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; PhD, Vanderbilt University) also has worked as a clinician, keeping the needs of children with hearing loss at the center of her work. Bess noted that Gravel spent several years working with children with hearing loss prior to pursuing a doctorate. "She has been in the trenches and understands what research is needed," Bess said.
For 25 years, Gravel has demonstrated her commitment to evidence-based practice through her carefully designed studies addressing key questions in pediatric audiology, including pediatric audiologic assessment techniques, audiologic/educational outcomes in children related to otitis media with effusion, mild hearing loss, unilateral hearing loss, and multiple amplification technologies. "Her presentations and publications are both scientific and practical, reflecting her profound interest in, understanding of, and respect for young children with hearing loss." Bess said.
Gravel's work on assessing the accuracy of frequency-specific ABR measures in predicting behavioral thresholds in children with normal and impaired hearing—an article that received the Ear and Hearing Editors Award in 1995—"has had substantial impact on how we approach the measurement of hearing sensitivity in infants," said Richard Seewald of the University of Western Ontario.
Gravel has contributed more than 35 book chapters and more than 50 articles to peer-reviewed journals; edited three books; led efforts to write position statements and practice guidelines; given more than 300 national and international presentations; and served in editorial positions for 20 journals.
Gravel, an adjunct professor at the medical schools of the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, also has won high praise for her teaching effectiveness. "Gravel's extraordinary ability to communicate and teach has helped to educate generations of clinicians worldwide—which has benefited many children and their families," Bess said.
An ASHA Fellow, Gravel has been invited to serve on more than 60 committees, panels, task forces, and review teams for many organizations, including ASHA, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, U.S. Public Health Service, Commission of the European Communities Directorate, Joint Committee on Infant Hearing (chair, 2003–2005), National Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Technical Assistance Advisory Group, International Working Group on Childhood Hearing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and as a Fulbright scholar.
"Gravel stays on the leading edge of clinical research, studying and interpreting new methods and then communicating her findings in ways that are timely and relevant," said Jackson Roush of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. He also praised Gravel's consensus-building ability, noting that the recently published Joint Committee 2007 Position Statement "bears the influence of her wisdom and leadership." Allan O. Diefendorf of Indiana University's School of Medicine echoed Gravel's collaborative skills, noting, "She is gifted in building consensus with diverse groups, in diverse geographic locations, and with numerous stakeholders."
"Judy Gravel has done it all," said Judith E. Widen of the University of Kansas Medical Center. "She has considered all aspects of pediatric hearing loss. She has tackled problems of accurate screening, improved diagnosis, and effective habilitation. And she has shared what she has learned through readable research articles and useful teaching tools."
 Gilbert R. Herer, director emeritus of the Children's Hearing and Speech Center at Children's National Medical Center (CNMC, Washington, D.C.), has devoted more than 40 years to improving the identification and treatment of hearing loss in newborns, infants, children, and individuals with disabilities. He created one of the first and largest single-hospital universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) programs in the country, a project that helped establish current universal screening laws.
Herer (BS, MS, Syracuse University; PhD, Northwestern University) spent 37 years (1964–2001) at CNMC while holding professorships in George Washington University's Department of Speech and Hearing and in the Department of Pediatrics of its medical school. "CNMC rose to the first rank in terms of reaching solutions for a diverse population during his time there," said Theodore J. Glattke of the University of Arizona. Herer created an early intervention preschool program, four regional hearing diagnostic centers, and the Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders at CNMC.
He secured $1.3 million in grants to screen infants and provide follow-up services, including free hearing aids, under the auspices of CNMC and Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland, and helped nine other hospitals implement similar programs. From 1997 to 2004, almost 50,000 newborns were screened at Holy Cross; 111 were detected with hearing loss before 3 months of age and received immediate intervention.
Donna Geffner of St. John's University recalled Herer's UNHS lobbying during her 1999 ASHA presidency. On the floor of Congress, he demonstrated the low cost of newborn screening and presented two youngsters with hearing loss. One child had been diagnosed at age 3; the other—screened at birth, diagnosed at 9 months, and enrolled in intervention—was developing speech and language skills commensurate with her hearing peers. "It was truly a remarkable moment," Geffner said.
In 1999, Herer designed and implemented the Healthy Hearing (HH) Program for Special Olympics (SO) athletes. HH recruits and trains audiologists, speech-language pathologists, physicians, and educators to establish programs that now serve SO athletes with intellectual disabilities in more than 60 countries. In 2007, he coordinated the training of 22 audiologists, otolaryngologists, and SLPs who, along with others, screened and tested 3,100 athletes at the SO World Summer Games in Shanghai. The HH team also conducted hearing aid evaluations and fittings for 66 athletes with hearing loss, most previously unidentified.
Herer has served in many positions in professional organizations including president of ASHA (1989) and the Maryland Speech-Language-Hearing Association (MSHA). A member of the American Academy of Audiology (AAA), Council for Exceptional Children, and American Auditory Society, Herer is a Fellow of ASHA, MSHA, and AAA. He received MSHA Honors, the Honored Service Award from the Pediatric Society of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties (Md.), the 1998 Outstanding Alumni Award of Syracuse University, and AAA's 2005 Humanitarian of the Year Award. The CNMC training program for pediatric audiologists and SLPs is named in his honor.
The author of many publications on advances in pediatric audiology, Herer "has never strayed far from the theme of early identification and intervention," Glattke said. "His publications on the use of otoacoustic emissions in pediatric populations were the first large-scale studies to validate the technique using behavioral audiometry as the gold standard."
"Herer has an extraordinary record of achievement in research, teaching, and service," added Charlena Seymour of the University of Massachusetts. "We are fortunate to have members in our Association who love what they do and do it with love."
 Dale Evan Metz is a prolific researcher whose publications demonstrate how one person's contributions "enhance research and therapeutic programs in our discipline for our generation and generations to come," said Howard Shane of Harvard Medical School.
Metz (BS, State University of New York at Geneseo; MS, Purdue University; PhD, Syracuse University) is professor of communicative disorders and sciences and director of the Speech Science Laboratory at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He is one of the nation's leading speech scientists and his programmatic body of research has led to many theoretical and clinical advances in normal speech and in speech production associated with deafness, hearing impairment, and stuttering.
Metz was one of five original members of the Communication Research Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) of the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research focused on identifying the acoustic and physiologic aspects of speech most important to speech intelligibility in people with hearing impairment. Metz and his colleagues designed a high-speech cinematography laboratory to collect precise data on vocal fold movement and glottal configuration. He has produced a number of films of vocal-fold action, including high-speed laryngeal photography through indirect laryngoscopy and real-time photography through a nasal fiber-optic endoscope.
At NTID, Metz and his colleagues also focused on the many psychometric problems in commonly used rating scale estimates of speech intelligibility tests. Their findings led to "dramatic changes in speech intelligibility estimate procedures at NTID," Shane said. Metz also examined estimates of speech naturalness following stuttering therapy, validating a widely used rating scale. "Use of feedback from this scale has made it possible to not only measure speech naturalness but also shape speech naturalness of stutter-free speech in speakers during stuttering treatment," said Roger Ingham of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Metz is also recognized for his research on simultaneous communication. "While many talked about the possibility that simultaneous communication might degrade the acoustic properties of speech, Metz actually explored whether it did or not," said Edward Conture of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "His findings on this topic—indicating no significant degradation, indeed even some enhancement—have moved the field from innuendo and anecdote to evidenced-based practice in the management of children who are deaf."
Metz's more than 60 publications, dozens of book chapters, and more than 100 presentations include two widely used texts: Introduction to Communication Disorders: A Life Span Perspective (3rd edition), coauthored with Robert Owens and Adelaide Haas; and Evaluating Research in Communicative Disorders, coauthored with Nicholas Schiavetti. Now in its fifth edition, this graduate-level text supports the quest to derive clinical practice from evidence-based research.
Metz also has held several editorial positions. As editor of Contemporary Issues in Communicative Sciences and Disorders, the journal of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, he has advanced the publication to one that "carries a high-quality product with articles by major scientists in our discipline," Ingham said.
As a mentor, Metz has encouraged students to participate in research activities and pursue doctoral degrees, and frequently co-authors and co-presents with students. "Metz has worked tirelessly for students and ASHA as well as for science," said Anthony Caruso, professor emeritus at Kent State University. Colleagues also note Metz's integrity and ethics. "He guides and advises countless students and colleagues and he insists on doing what is right, even if it's not popular," Conture said. "His achievements result from a lifetime of dedication, hard work, and passion for people to learn, grow, and develop."
 Richard E. Talbott, dean of the College of Allied Health Professions at the University of South Alabama, is "an outstanding voice and volunteer in our professional associations" who has made important contributions as an academic administrator, teacher, and scientist, according to John Ferraro of the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Talbott (BA, MA, West Virginia University; PhD, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center) has held administrative appointments at six universities in an academic career that spans more than 30 years. Three years after receiving his PhD in audiology, he was named head of the Speech Pathology and Audiology Program at the University of Oklahoma, and then served in administrative positions at the University of Georgia, University of Virginia, University of Central Florida, and University of South Alabama.
Fred Bess of Vanderbilt University noted that Talbott is "a truly outstanding academician—an exceptional administrator, a superb teacher, and a true ambassador to the profession. All of us admire him for his ability to build programs, recruit and retain outstanding staff and faculty, obtain extramural funding to support his program activities, and create innovative partnerships."
Ferraro added that Talbott "has left every program of which he has been a part in considerably better shape than when he entered it."
An early advocate of the professional doctorate in audiology, Talbott helped position future audiologists for "contemporary care in the 21st century," said Lucille Beck of the Veterans Health Administration. "His leadership shifted the paradigm and began the debate about improvements in education and training for audiologists. His insightful guidance, academic experience, and tireless efforts proved invaluable in developing and implementing the entry-level doctoral degree."
Talbott's role in the transition process has won wide praise. "He was the most important individual in our profession in the early discussion about moving audiology to a doctoral-level entry," said Roger Ruth of the University of Kansas Medical Center. "He led these discussions with balance and equity, clearly presenting the pros and cons of whatever issue was on the floor."
As a researcher, Talbott's work has probed topics ranging from otoacoustic emissions to hearing aid output, and he was among the first audiologists to embrace the theories and clinical utility of auditory-evoked potentials. He also contributed important work related to the measurement of the acoustic reflex and the application of otoacoustic emissions in neonatal screening. His scholarly work includes 40 publications, three book chapters, 75 presentations, editorial service on six journals, and coordination of two ASHA research panels. "One of his most important contributions to research, however, has been his excellent mentorship of the many students who have passed through his programs," said James Jerger of the University of Texas at Dallas.
Talbott's service to the professions includes membership on more than 100 professional, university, and community committees. He was recently elected to the board of the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions and chaired the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation's 2008 golf tournament.
Talbott, an ASHA Fellow, has received several teaching awards from the University of Oklahoma, University of Georgia, and University of South Alabama. The Council of Academic programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders presented him with its Honors, an award of appreciation, and a career service award.
Talbott is "one of a kind," Jerger said, "a truly versatile individual who is as much at home with clinical, scientific, and administrative concerns as he is with the broad philosophical issues facing our profession."
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