Jennell C. Vick
PhD Student and Research Assistant, Department of Speech and
Hearing Sciences
University of Washington
Certificate of Clinical Competence, Speech-Language
Pathology
1996 MA, Case Western Reserve University
Communication Sciences
1994 BS, Ohio University
Hearing and Speech Sciences; Honors Tutorial College
I chose an academic/research career because:
I want to find answers to my questions about how to best serve
our clinical populations. It never ceases to amaze me how one
question can fuel an entire career of experiments.
What do you do in your career as a teacher, scholar,
and/or researcher?
I am currently studying at the University of Washington, a
research-intensive university. I work among 30 fellow doctoral
students. In addition to my course work, I work as a research
assistant in the Developmental Speech Physiology Laboratory,
headed by Christopher Moore. My project is part of a multicenter
investigation aimed at understanding the factors that
differentiate preschool children with speech delay of unknown
origin from their typically developing peers. Close to 300
children have participated; the protocol includes measures of
speech and language production. Our contribution is analysis of
the physiological and kinematic features of the children's
speech production.
My role in the project is to ensure that algorithms are
created to generate any number of the 1,100 variables that we
will contribute to the overall computational model that will,
hopefully, enable us to understand the factors that differentiate
children with speech delay from their typical peers. These
algorithms extract features of the movement of the children's
external articulators, respiratory system, and nasal and
phonatory systems. A large part of my training in the past 2
years has been learning to write code in MATLAB for this purpose.
Each recording is approximately 20 minutes in length and includes
both data from a multichannel recorder for the physiological
signals and a VHS tape that records the movement of the external
articulators, using an infrared light source and small reflective
stickers placed on the lips, jaw, forehead, and nose of the
children. The process of digitizing the tapes and synchronizing
the movement data with the physiological data for each of the
20-minute recordings requires about 40 hours of time. Thus,
another aspect of my work is the management of a number of hourly
workers (both undergraduate and master's students) who are
critical to the completion of this project!
How did you get to the position you have today?
Prior to beginning my PhD studies, I was a Research Scientist in
the Speech Communication Group in the Research Laboratory of
Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In that
capacity, I worked on a project that investigated the role of
hearing in speech production, particularly in postlingually
deafened adults who received cochlear implants. My
responsibilities included research design, recruiting and
recording participants, data preparation, and analyses. I also
wrote and contributed to publications and public presentation of
results. I took this position just after completing my
master's degree in communication sciences, thinking that it
would be good preparation for doctoral study. Little did I know
that my time there would exceed 8 years! In my first 2 years at
MIT, I completed my clinical fellowship in the evenings, working
for a rehab company that provided contractual services to skilled
nursing facilities. I specifically provided services in the areas
of dysphagia, language, speech, and cognitive-linguistic
evaluation and treatment. Providing speech services in the
evenings in these settings was unique because the evening nursing
staff had little experience with the rehab department.
When the time came for me to begin my doctoral studies, I
sought a new lab that pursued similar research questions to those
I was working on at MIT, but with different techniques and a
different population. While the questions we studied at MIT
sought to understand the processes involved in typical and
disordered adult speech production, my lab at UW investigates the
processes involved in typical and disordered child speech
production. I am finding that the similarities of these research
experiences exceed the differences!
What were the key factors in your academic/research
career decision(s)?
My undergraduate degree experience was very unique and led to my
decision to pursue a career in academics. I was enrolled in the
Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, as a student in the
Hearing and Speech Sciences department. In this program, most of
my education took place one-on-one with professors in
"tutorials," where my learning on a given topic was
guided by my own curiosity and research. My tutorial on
craniofacial disorders, for instance, culminated in a research
paper on the potential association between the atomic explosions
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the increased prevalence of cleft
lip and palate among infants in Japan. To develop my hypotheses
for this paper, I worked with both a medical radiologist and a
geneticist on campus. I took part in a number of doctoral
seminars as part of the tutorial program and worked most closely
with my advisor, Richard Dean, on a research project that
resulted in my undergraduate thesis project. This is the first
key factor in my academic/research career decision as I hoped to
mentor students with the same excellence that the faculty in the
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Ohio University used
to mentor me.
I also gained valuable research experience in my position as a
research assistant in Danielle Ripich's Alzheimer's
Disease Language Research Laboratory in the Department of
Communication Sciences at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).
The project investigated the effect of communication training for
caregivers of people with dementia on the types of dialogues
observed between the caregivers and the patients, as well as on
the quality of life of the caregivers. I was so impressed by the
fact that research could directly impact the clients that we
serve as SLPs, and that there is the potential for work as a
researcher to actually impact an entire clinical population. As a
clinician, I could help one person at a time, which is a noble
pursuit. As a researcher, I realized, I could potentially help a
large number of clinicians who each are helping many patients.
The impact of my work could be more far-reaching. This ideal is
what led me to my career as a researcher.
What do you like most about your career?
The best thing about my career is the variety! Just in the cycle
of a grant, for instance, there is the intense work that leads to
the preparation of a good grant proposal, the revisions (because
these days, it is so rare to get funded on the first go-round!),
the development of facilities to prepare for the experiments, the
recruiting and maintenance of research participants, the
experiments, the years of data extraction and then analyses, the
preparation of manuscripts and presentations to report your
results, and then more intense work for the next grant proposal!
Each year in a 5-year funding cycle is so dramatically different
than the next. Each has its share of challenges, but it is
certainly NEVER boring!
What do you like least about your career?
I think the uncertainty of funding is my least favorite part of
life in research. Regardless of whether the funding agency to
which you're applying is experiencing lean or generous times,
there is always the potential that your idea just isn't
fundable. Even if your job is secure, there are always students
and employees who rely on your ability to obtain funding. This
can be scary.
Who are your heroes/heroines?
Christopher Moore, my doctoral advisor at the University of
Washington. He has been an extraordinary mentor. Joseph Perkell,
my boss at MIT and the principal investigator of the project on
which I worked. His research ideals are high. He was a mentor by
example for all of the years that I worked with him and a great
advisor as I made my transition to doctoral studies at UW. He is
also a wonderful friend. Bernard Henri, Executive Director of the
Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center. I don't know of anyone
who has encouraged me to get my PhD more than Bernard. I always
admired his tireless effort to make the Cleveland Hearing and
Speech Center such an extraordinary organization that not only
provides exemplary service to the community and clinical
populations it serves, but also to the CWRU graduate students who
become clinicians under the supervision of the clinical staff. It
is a remarkable place. Erin Vick, my sister. The only person I
know that truly is a "superstar!" I could elaborate for
pages, but suffice it to say that she is a remarkable woman whom
I admire with all my heart.
What advice would you give to an undergraduate or
master's student who expressed an interest in an
academic/research career in communication sciences and
disorders?
My best advice for an undergraduate or master's student who
is interested in an academic/research career is to TALK to the
people who are living these careers. Find out why they are there
and what they like about their careers. It can be scary-these
folks are probably your professors and you might even be a little
intimidated. Believe me, though, they would be happy to take some
time to talk with you and answer your questions. If you have a
chance to attend a professional meeting, it can be a good
opportunity to talk to people in these types of careers. ASHA and
the ASHFoundation have grants to provide research opportunities
to students. Apply! Immersion is the best way to find out if a
career suits you.
What was the best thing about your PhD program?
The best thing about my PhD program is the large number of
doctoral students. Our interests are wide and varied, yet we are
able to support each other noncompetitively. We all present our
work in the form of an hour-long seminar annually in our doctoral
research forum. This allows us an opportunity to not only polish
our work for presentation but to get to know each other's
areas of interests. I have a built-in group of colleagues with
diverse areas of expertise on whom I can call in the event I need
advice on their topic. I also have the opportunity to see three
or four people actually finish their PhD every year-there is
always someone to talk to about the next step in my program.
If you did your PhD program or your early career years
all over again, what would you do differently?
Not one thing!
How do you find balance between your professional
activities and your personal life? What do you do to
relax?
My entire life is about balance. I am a speech researcher and
doctoral student, sure. But I am also an artist and a friend and
a family member who loves my life OUTSIDE of the lab. It takes
more discipline to leave the lab sometimes than it does to keep
working. So far, though, I've found that the work is still
there waiting for me in the morning.
I do hope to have a family someday, and I know that the
challenge of keeping my life balanced will grow exponentially at
that time. I think that our field is pretty progressive in
understanding the challenge of balancing work with family life,
though, and it will be possible.
What will you be doing 5 years from now? 10 years from
now?
I expect that in 5 years I will be a young faculty member at a
large research university, after having completed my PhD at the
UW and possibly a postdoc. I hope to have my own funding and a
successful new research lab starting up, with strong
collaborations. In 10 years, I hope to have earned tenure and to
have graduated at least one doctoral student. I hope to have
mentored countless undergraduate and master's students and to
have generated research results that benefit the field of
speech-language pathology and the populations we serve. I
can't wait!