2004 Honors of the Association

ASHA's highest achievement, the Honors of the Association, have been granted to five outstanding individuals for 2004. The awards are conferred in November at ASHA's Annual Convention.

Martin R. ("Marty") Adams
University of Houston

Martin R. ("Marty") Adams, professor emeritus of the Department of Communication Disorders of the University of Houston, is a teacher and scholar with an enduring influence on his profession. His investigations into the physiologic and aerodynamic characteristics of the vocal tract during stuttered and nonstuttered speech "provided new perspectives regarding the etiology and nature of stuttering and its occurrence. His studies also illustrated how the modification of vocal tract behaviors might have important implications for the clinical management of stuttering," says Richard F. Curlee, professor emeritus of the University of Arizona.

The most important aspect of Adams's "seminal research and thinking" on stuttering, adds Edward G. Conture of Vanderbilt University, is related to laryngeal difficulties. Although the larynx was always a factor in speech-language production, Adams brought its significance to the forefront. According to Conture, "Adams argues, and appropriately so, that by overlooking the role of the larynx in stuttering we were overlooking a potentially significant contributor to stuttering in children and adults." His work, in turn, led to many studies of laryngeal behavior and stuttering. "Without this work," says Conture, "we would still be treating people who stutter as if they didn't have a larynx!"

Adams (BA and MA, University of Redlands; PhD, Southern Illinois University) began his career as an assistant professor at Kent State University in 1967-and was named "Outstanding Young Teacher" by the Central States Speech Association during his time there. He then moved to Purdue University-where he earned the "Best Teacher Award" twice, in 1974 and 1975-and finally to the University of Houston where he served as head of the program in communication disorders and was honored as a "Top Prof." He also served as an adjunct full professor of neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine from 1982 to 1997. During his 30-year academic career Adams maintained his own clinical practice and became an inspiring-and in-spired-mentor to many young scholars who would go on to earn their own impressive reputations.

When Adams took over as head at the University of Houston he led the program, which had been targeted as expendable because of its high operating costs, in developing a special curriculum for part-time students that enabled them to attend evening classes and complete a master's degree in four years. The program was a dramatic success, not only enabling many students to earn degrees who were not formerly able to do so, but also happily bringing his program into the positive side of the financial ledger. Because of Adams's accomplishment, the University of Houston upgraded his unit to departmental status.

A Fellow of ASHA and of the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation, Adams served as associate editor for the areas of fluency and fluency disorders for both the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders (JSHD) and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology as well as serving for many years as reviewer for JSHD, the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (JSHR), and the Journal of Fluency Disorders (JFD).

At a 1982 ASHA Convention session on the topic of stuttering, Michael Webster presented data from a survey on the number of times researchers on stuttering had been cited in JSHR, JSHD, and JFD during the decade 1972-1982. Adams came out way ahead with 195 citations, followed by such luminaries of the field as Wendell Johnson (178), Oliver Bloodstein (113), and Charles Van Riper (69). Frivolous data, perhaps, but still pretty impressive numbers.

John E. Bernthal
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

John E. Bernthal, professor and chair of the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders and director of the Barkley Memorial Center of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is "a man and a professional for all seasons," says Nicholas W. Bankson, of James Madison University and Bernthal's career-long collaborator. "How fortunate we have been that he directed his considerable talents and abilities toward those with communication impairments and the professions that work with this population."

Bernthal (BFA, Wayne State College; MA, Kansas University; PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) began his career in 1970 in the Department of Speech at Mankato State University. In 1973 he joined the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland and in 1976 became director of clinical speech services. It was here that Bernthal began working with Nicholas Bankson, publishing the first edition of their classic text, Articulation and Phonological Disorders, in 1981. The book is currently in its fifth edition. From 1979-1983, Bernthal-who holds dual certification in audiology and speech-language patholo-gy-was on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa, where he was head of the Department of Communicative Disorders, and finally, in 1984, he assumed his current position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Bernthal's work in the area of childhood articulation and phonological disorders is widely admired, as are his contributions to the accurate measurement of speech behaviors and his scholarly work in evidence-based practice. He continues to be a sought-after speaker at national and international meetings. His work also includes an additional dimension that is characteristic of Bernthal's approach to scholarship: what Rosalind R. Scudder of Wichita State University calls his "amazing ability" to include students and younger colleagues in his research work. "He is encouraging and supportive of their work, often taking less credit in an effort to help in their professional development."

This unusual generosity of spirit and modesty is evident in Bernthal's many contributions to the professions and especially to ASHA. He served as ASHA president in 2001 and vice president for Quality of Service 1996-1998. In just a few of many more examples of service, he gave his time to the Professional and Scientific Board, the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Education, the Council on Professional Standards, the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Governance Structure of the Association, and the Membership Committee. He was also a member of the Convention Program Committee nine times. His contributions to other organizations such as the Council of Exceptional Children and both the Iowa and Nebraska Speech-Language-Hearing Associations are equally impressive and revealing of Bernthal's leadership ability and humanity.

Bernthal's achievements have been recognized with numerous awards: he is a Fellow of ASHA and of the Iowa Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and holds the Honors of the Nebraska Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the Council of Graduate Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, the Division of Children With Communication Disorders of the Council of Exceptional Children, and was twice awarded the Honors of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association.

Apart from what James McLean, senior scientist emeritus of the University of Kansas, calls Bernthal's "remarkable talent for making major contributions to governmental and professional organizations," he has never lost sight of his most important function: "Always implicit in his efforts to serve his professional colleagues has been his clear appreciation of the fact that his most basic constituents are the children and youths who require specialized educational and therapeutic services," says McLean. 

Richard F. Curlee
Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona

Richard F. Curlee, professor emeritus of the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences of the University of Arizona, has made significant contributions to the field of communication sciences and disorders, especially to the area of stuttering research and treatment, over the course of his long and illustrious career. In fact, says Audrey Holland, professor emerita of the University of Arizona and a long-time colleague of Curlee's, "I think it is safe to say that the discipline has no more dedicated member, that the profession has no more principled and talented practitioner, and that the field itself has no more scholarly contributor, in terms of research, teaching, editing, and simply serving as a role model for others to follow."

Before Curlee (BA, Wake Forest College; MA and PhD, University of Southern California) joined the faculty at the University of Arizona, he had already worked as an SLP at the Children's Speech and Hearing Center in Van Nuys, CA, taught in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Southern California, and served as ASHA associate secretary for Research and Scientific Affairs from 1971-1975. In the latter position he provided the research direction to the Clinical Services Review System and the Professional Standards Review Organization, the forerunners of the later Treatment Outcomes Measures and the current evidence-based and efficacy clinical trials and research efforts. Curlee then moved to the University of Arizona where he wore various academic and administrative hats including associate dean of the Graduate College, interim head of the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and, most recently, professor emeritus. He was also the recipient of the university's Faculty of Science Distinguished Teaching Award.

Curlee's work in the area of stuttering has made significant contributions to the understanding and treatment of the disorder. Among the most noteworthy, says Edward G. Conture of Vanderbilt University, is the thought-provoking paper Curlee published with Perkins and Kent in 1991 in the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (JSHR), "A Theory of Neuropsycholinguistic Function in Stuttering." In Conture's view, "This theoretical paper brought together germane knowledge and theory from the realms of psycholinguistics, speech science, speech-language pathology, and psychology. Suffice it to say, this article, and the theory it described, continue to be discussed to date and will, undoubtedly, continue to be discussed for many more years to come." Other scholarly contributions, such as Curlee's and Siegel's Nature and Treatment of Stuttering: New Directions, and the clinical Stuttering and Related Disorders of Fluency are highly regarded textbooks in the field. Curlee's work in stuttering was recognized by the Stuttering Foundation of America, which presented him with the Malcolm Fraser Award in 2002.

Curlee, who is an ASHA Fellow and holds the Honors of the Arizona Speech-Language-Hearing Association, has contributed greatly to the professions as well. He has been an active member of the California and Arizona Speech-Language-Hearing Associations as well as ASHA. For ASHA, for example, he chaired the Committee on National Elections, the Specialty Certification Task Force, and the Special Interest Division 4 Committee, Specialty Commission on Fluency Disorders (now the Specialty Board on Fluency Disorders). He was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Language-Learning Disorders, and the Task Force on Personnel Supply, Demand, and Utilization. In the area of scholarly service to publications, Curlee served as an associate editor for the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, JSHR, the Journal of Fluency Disorders (and was editor of the latter from 2000-2003), and Seminars in Speech and Language (of which he was editor from 1990-2000).

Of Curlee's many accomplishments and characteristics, at least two do not clearly fit a scholarly category: Says Janis Costello Ingham of the University of California, Santa Barbara, "Dick is consistently thought of as a balanced and calming influence in the sometimes contentious world of the stuttering research and clinical community. That's a major accomplishment in itself." Audrey Holland comments on "his acid wit, his sharp tongue, and his willingness to inflict both of them on anyone willing to listen. (Or perhaps on anyone who happens just to be within earshot.) It is central to the character of Richard Curlee, and to me one of the most cherished aspects of his genuine collegiality."

Lawrence L. Feth
The Ohio State University

Lawrence L. Feth, professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at The Ohio State University, is "ASHA's ambassador of science," says Gerald Kidd, Jr., of Boston University.

The well-deserved kudos for Feth's academic and research accomplishments and for his service to ASHA and to the field in general, adds Kidd, "only partially captures Larry Feth's contributions. Perhaps his most effective role, and the one that will have the most long-lasting influence, has been as an advocate for the Association and for the role of scientists in ASHA. Our Association and our professions need more people like Larry Feth."

Feth began his academic career with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Ohio State. The engineering background held him in good stead in his doctoral work in bioacoustics at the University of Pittsburgh where his work-with Robert Bilger as advisor and mentor-involved interdisciplinary research stressing the underlying physical, biological, and psychological mechanisms of hearing. His first published work in 1969-now in the area of psychoacoustics-dealt with detection of frequency-modulated tones. Feth continued his research training at the University of California at San Diego during a post-doc with the psychoacoustician David Green. It was here that his work began to focus on temporal and spectral cues in masking and frequency discrimination. His work continues to have important implications for understanding speech perception in which acoustic cues vary dynamically over time and may provide insights for the design of cochlear prostheses for people with severe-to-pro-found hearing loss. As a measure of Feth's commitment to furthering the careers of his younger colleagues, it must be noted that more than 80% of his published works are co-authored with students or junior colleagues.

Following his post-doc, Feth took a position in the speech and hearing sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi. He then moved to the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, then to Purdue University. In 1982 he joined the faculty of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences and Disorders at the University of Kansas as professor and department chair. In 1988, he moved back to The Ohio State University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and is an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh. During his academic career, Feth has received funding primarily from the National Institutes of Health and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. His work has been widely recognized: He is a Fellow of ASHA and the Acoustical Society of America, he shared the Editor's Award from the American Journal of Audiology, and was named a Joan Huber Faculty Fellow, an award given to the top scholars in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State.

Since the beginning of his career in the early 1970s, Feth has served the professions. His work for ASHA is particularly impressive. He has been chair of both the Committee on Audiological Standards and the Committee on Scientific Affairs, the first coordinator of the special interest division on Hearing Research, the representative to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and several times on the Program Committee for ASHA's Convention. Feth's work for ASHA's publications is a category of contribution in itself: He was associate editor of the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, editor of ASHA Monographs, and a publications board member and chair.

Feth's contributions are summed up by his colleague, Robert Allen Fox of Ohio State: "Larry meets or exceeds all the expectations that our discipline places on its most eminent scholars. In particular, his publication rate-primarily in the most auspicious journals in the field-is admirable, his grant record-from nationally recognized sources such as the National Institutes of Health, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Science Foundation-extraordinary, and his service to the discipline basically unsurpassed." 

Judith R. Johnston
University of British Columbia

Judith R. Johnston, professor in the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC), is renowned internationally for her work on children's language impairments. According to colleague and former student Ron Gillam of the University of Texas at Austin, the "depth and breadth of her research" over the past 35 years place Johnston among the world's top scholars in the field of child language dis orders.

After receiving her BA and MA degrees at Stanford University, Johnston worked as a clinician at a Rehabilitation and Research Center in San Mateo, CA, and at the Institute for Childhood Aphasia at the Stanford Medical School. Hoping to clarify her understanding of the nature of intervention, she then moved across the bay and completed doctoral studies in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Dan Slobin. While there she provided clinical and research consultation to the Richmond Unified Schools and the Los Angeles County Schools, and coordinated a large cross-linguistic study of language acquisition. Johnston began her academic career in 1977 at Indiana University, Bloomington, and remained there until 1988 when she joined the faculty at UBC as director of the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences.

Johnston is internationally known for groundbreaking research on the developmental relationships between language and cognition, particularly as seen in the profiles of children with specific language impairment. She was one of the first researchers to show that such children also have difficulties with nonverbal tasks, and to argue that the total evidence picture indicates limitations in cognitive processing capacity. Her work has helped identify the unmet needs of children with language-learning problems as well as revealing important gaps in the knowledge base underlying clinical practice.

Throughout her career she has helped to fill those gaps by focusing on the application of research to clinical practice. Her latest endeavor in this area was brought to fruition in 2002, with the launch of a Web site for clinical educators and other professionals. The site includes research, media reviews, and the Language Intervention Digest, an electronic publication with summaries of research and commentary on its implications for clinical practice.

Johnston is also known as an extraordinary teacher and an outstanding mentor whose doctoral and master's level students include Alan Kamhi, Susan Ellis Weismer, Ron Gillam, Lucy Hess, Bonnie Brinton, and Jim Montgomery-a group that is impressively carrying into the next generation her commitment to scholarship and teaching. That commitment has been rewarded on multiple occasions: Among her recognitions, Johnston was named a Fellow of ASHA, and is the recipient of Indiana University's Distinguished Teaching Award, the Editor's Award from Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, the Honours of the Association of the British Columbia Association of SLPs and Audiologists, the Killam University Teaching Prize of UBC's Faculty of Medicine, and, last year, the 3M Teaching Fellowship from Canada's Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Johnston's scientific contributions are widely recognized and respected, but, says Mabel Rice of the University of Kansas, her greatest work is not so obvious. "I believe her true gifts have been as synthesizer and conciliator of diverse perspectives. It takes a highly knowledgeable, genuine scholar to be able to comment on differences and similarities across different perspectives in an area of investigation as lively and contentious as the study of chil-dren's language and language impairments. Judith has this depth of scholarship, creative insights, and genuine affection for the field to serve as guru, wise person, and personal mentor to many of us in the field. It is an extraordinary gift."

Margaret Lahey
Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation

Margaret Lahey, president of the Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation, has had a distinguished career in speech-language pathology that has spanned half a century. "Her vast and varied contributions include virtually every role possi-ble-clinician, teacher, researcher, author, and perhaps most generally, nurturer of others," says Marc E. Fey of the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her contributions through these roles, adds Fey, "have made an enduring impact on the profession at every level. The principal beneficiaries of these contributions, ultimately, are the children for whom Peg so ably advocates."

Lahey (BS, State University of New York at Geneseo; MA, Ohio State University; EdD, Teachers College, Columbia University [TC]), began her career in 1953 as a speech clinician in Ohio. Her clinical career continued in Connecticut where she worked at Hartford Hospital, had a private practice, and was an SLP in the Ellington, CT public schools. After completion of her doctoral work in the early 1970s, her career continued in academic settings. First, Lahey was on the faculty of Montclair State College in New Jersey, with a joint appointment as research associate at TC. For most of her teaching career she was professor of communication sciences at Hunter College, teaching and mentoring master's level students, with a concurrent appointment at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she taught and mentored doctoral level students. Lahey concluded her academic career as professor and chair of the Division of Communication Disorders at Emerson College in Boston where she developed a new doctoral level program. Since 2000, Lahey has been president of the Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation, an organization founded by her daughter, Denise Lahey, and her son-in-law, Roger Bamford.

Lahey published numerous groundbreaking articles and, in 1978, with Lois Bloom, the book that forever altered the practice of assessment and intervention for children - Language Development and Language Disorders (published along with Lahey's edited set of important related articles, Readings in Childhood Language Disorders). In a very short time the book became the standard text both in normal language acquisition and in child language disorders. Before the appearance of the book, says Julie Masterson of Southwest Missouri State University, "Treatment typically did not involve meaningful communication; instead it was based on adult intuition about treatment targets and built around the principles of operant conditioning." Bloom and Lahey's model of content-form-use viewed language as a rich system to be used for communication interaction. Ten years later, she authored a follow-up text , Language Disorders and Language Development.

Lahey now lends her considerable talents to the work of the Bamford-Lahey Children's Foundation, which was founded by her daughter and son-in-law but conceptualized and organized by Lahey herself. The foundation is dedicated to education and research related to language disorders in children and it is Lahey's vision that informs the group's work. In its short history the Foundation has awarded 21 scholarships to doctoral students whose focus of study is child language disorders and six grants to faculty involved in research or development projects that may ultimately benefit children with language disorders. In the spring of 2004, the Foundation sponsored an innovative working group meeting on evidence-based practice relative to child language disorders and devoted a section of its Web site to information on such practice. Lahey has served as mentor to a great number of students, directing master's projects and doctoral dissertations.

During her career she has been awarded a number of training and research grants from private and public agencies including NIH and the Office of Education. She has also been, and continues to be, an editorial consultant for several research journals, and has served on ASHA committees as well as committees of the New York Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Widely recognized for her work, Lahey is an ASHA Fellow and a recipient of the New York State Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Distinguished Achievement Award, the Professional Achievement Award of the New York City Speech-Language-Hearing-Association, and the Frank R. Kleffner Clinical Career Award of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation.

Julie Masterson tells how she first met Lahey. Masterson had been using Lahey's texts throughout her own education and continued using them with her students after she received her doctorate, but she had never actually met Lahey. Then, in the late '80s, Masterson was standing by her poster at the ASHA Convention in Boston, when someone tapped her on the shoulder. "I hear you like my book," Lahey said to her. Masterson continues, "I remember feeling the urge to curtsy or something because she was as close to a professional idol as anyone had ever been to me." 

Malcolm R. McNeil
University of Pittsburgh; VA Pittsburgh Health Care System

Malcolm R. McNeil, professor and chair of the Department of Communication Science and Disorders and professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh, and senior research scientist at the VA Pittsburgh Health Care System, says John C. Rosenbek of the University of Florida, lends the lie to the belief of "many mid-and most late-career scientists that the best source of fuel for sustaining another year of thought and activity is much more likely to come from outside one's own profession rather than from inside it." The exception to this conviction, Rosenbek believes, is McNeil's presentations in aphasiology. "I and my other senior colleagues learn from him. We do so because Dr. McNeil has never been content to bob along in the wake of prevailing notions. He is always looking for alternatives or at least worrying about the existing ones. As a result he keeps us all just a little bit uneasy and, best of all, more thoughtful."

McNeil began his career as a staff SLP at the VA Hospital in Denver. From there he proceeded up the academic ranks beginning at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1992. He's been department chairman for 12 years.

Throughout his career McNeil (BA and MA, Northern Michigan University; PhD, University of Denver) has done meticulous work in the areas of apraxia of speech and aphasia-his Revised Token Test is one of the most enduring tests for aphasia- yet he continues to research and test the validity of his own results. His style-this according to Rosenbek-is to patiently generate hypotheses, test them, and then use the data to revise his initial hypotheses. It's not surprising then that, although he had one of the first studies of apraxia funded by the National Institutes of Health 25 years ago, he's now revising his early discussion of its proper treatment.

His concerns and presentation have been equally precise in all of his 125 publications and 150 scientific papers and another 115 invited sessions. McNeil's craft and his care are evident as well in his direction of student research-he has overseen 25 master's theses and 14 doctoral dissertations, and there are several in progress.

He has approached his professional contributions with the same diligence and concern for quality. McNeil has been a member of or chaired countless committees for ASHA and other professional groups: he was chair, for example, of the Committee on Education and Standards of the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences and the Membership Committee of the Academy of Aphasia, and is currently chair of the Board of Governors of the latter organization. He twice served as treasurer for the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders. He is consultant to many journals and has served as associate editor of Clinical Aphasiology, the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, and the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. He is on the editorial boards of Aphasiology, Asia-Pacific Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing, and the Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology and a consultant to the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. McNeil has also been widely honored for his work. He is an ASHA Fellow and was awarded the Honors of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association and the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences.

"Every profession has its paragons and its meter sticks against which accomplishments are measured," says Robert T. Wertz of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "Speech-language pathology also has its giants, but none stands taller than Malcolm McNeil. Dr. McNeil has created a culture of excellence in research, education, patient care, and service to the profession. He is his profes-sion's statesman, representing the best among us and making us as good as we often wish we were." 

Mabel L. Rice
University of Kansas

Mabel L. Rice, Fred and Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing at the University of Kansas, is "a scholar of the highest caliber whose career contributions to the discipline of child language have been of enormous significance," says Ehud Yairi of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Rice (BA and MA, University of Northern Iowa; PhD, University of Kansas) is best known for her groundbreaking multidisciplinary research that bridges psychology, linguistics, and speech-language pathology to explore the understanding of specific language impairment (SLI) and to precisely characterize the morphosyntactic abilities of children with SLI, a condition affecting 7% of kindergarten-aged children. Her collaboration with Kenneth Wexler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced the most extensive longitudinal study of children's grammatical development and culminated in The Rice/Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment-the first criterion-referenced test to diagnose grammatical deficits in children with SLI. Rice's current work, which links scholars from around the globe, investigates the genetic underpinnings of child language. She is also known for her important work examining, for example, the impact of television on children's vocabulary acquisition, the connection between language and cognition, and the role of language abilities in children's peer interactions.

Rice, whose research has taken her to universities in France, Germany, Australia, and Japan, is the director of two research centers of the LifeSpan Institute at the University of Kansas-the Merrill Advanced Studies Center, for which she has convened three conferences on the topics of genes, the environment, and developmental language disorders; and the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders, which supports the work of researchers studying causes of hearing, language, and communication disorders, and leading to treatments for children and adults. Rice has also pioneered the interdisciplinary Child Language Doctoral Program, the first ever of its kind. She has directed the program-and has obtained the support necessary to run it-since its beginnings in 1983.

Among her many contributions, Rice has served on ASHA's Specialty Board on Child Language, Research and Scientific Affairs Committee, and Publication Board. She's been editor for language of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR), associate editor of Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, and affiliated also with the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Child Development, and Language Acquisition. She has served on numerous panels and boards of the National Institutes of Health, particularly the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Rice's work has been recognized nationally and internationally. She is an ASHA Fellow, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and is the recipient of numerous additional honors. She is one of the University of Kansas's Women of Distinction and received its Olin Petefish Award in the Basic Sciences and the Higuchi Research Achievement Award. She was also honored with the Award for Alumni Lifetime Achievement from the Department of Communicative Disorders of the University of Northern Iowa. In 1995 Rice received JSLHR's Editor's Award of Highest Merit for Language Publication for her article (with Wexler and Cleave) "Specific Language Impairment as a Period of Extended Optional Infinitive."

Finally, it is fitting to note Rice's contributions to the future of research. "As impressed as I am with Professor Rice's research accomplishments," says Laurence B. Leonard of Purdue University, "I may be even more impressed with the high quality of the doctoral students she has mentored. Just a few of the names from this list of current and future stars are Betty Bunce, Ruth Watkins, Janna Oetting, Pamela Hadley, Patricia Cleave, Melanie Schuele, and Sean Redmond. These individuals are the future of ASHA-affiliated scholarship, and we have Professor Rice to thank for her significant hand in shaping these fine minds." 

Kathryn M. Yorkston
University of Washington

Kathryn M. Yorkston, professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington, "does more in a given time frame than our most productive colleagues by orders of magnitude," says Lee Ann C. Golper of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "For those of us who live in the 'house' of neurogenic speech pathologies, 'Yorkston' is a household word. She has given us research, tests, assessment protocols, treatment materials, evidence-based guidelines, continuing education, leadership, and, most of all, an example of the prototype of a focused researcher and a compassionate clinician."

Yorkston's considerable contributions to the clinical research literature in dysarthria and in motor speech disorders and augmentative communication over the past 30 years have significantly shaped the field. Of her dozen published books, one of them - Clinical Management of Motor Speech Disorders and its second edition, Clinical Management of Motor Speech Disorders in Children and Adults - are used widely, nationally and internationally, as the major text in courses in this area. Widely used as well and essential to the experimental design of many clinical research paradigms is the test she developed with David Beukelman, The Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech ( AIDS, or CAIDS in its computerized form). She is also involved in ongoing work in the development of practice guidelines in motor speech disorders.

Yorkston (BA, Stanford University; MA and PhD, University of Oregon) is known for her generosity in sharing her time and expertise with seasoned clinicians-and, ultimately, with their clients-who frequently consult with her on difficult cases. This generosity also extends to her younger colleagues, to whom she is recognized as the finest of mentors. The inspiration of Yorkston's own scholarship and her facilitation of her students' intellectual creativity have created and continue to create new scholars and new knowledge that add to the solidity of the research base underlying her discipline.

A Fellow of ASHA and a recipient of the Clinical Achievement Award of both the Washington Speech and Hearing Association and the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences, Yorkston has served her profession in myriad capacities. She has served on numerous ASHA committees-she has been a member of the Publications Board and the Convention Program Committee eight times, has served on the Committee on Functional Outcome Scales and on the Steering Committee for Special Interest Division 2, Neurophysiology. She has also contributed to many other groups, including the National Head Injury Foundation, the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine, and the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She has lent her expertise as editorial consultant or associate editor to many research journals - the Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.

Finally, says Robert C. Marshall of the University of Kentucky, "Kathy is one of the most likeable, generous, kind, and caring persons I know. She listens and is never too busy to take on a difficult problem or professional challenge. Much of what she does is at the sacrifice of her personal time and personal goals because she is a person who cares passionately about the profession and its clients with communication disorders."