Our Mission, History, and Honors

SLHS faculty are committed to helping students understand the science of human communication and its disorders and developing skills as clinicians and researchers. We do this by:

• Creating new knowledge in Human Communication Sciences and Disorders
• Training students within the scientific method of the field, in the critical thinking skills, and tools for lifelong learning
• Instructing students in the selection, translation, and application of established and new information
• Fulfilling the University’s land grant mission by serving as a national resource for Applied Neuroscience of Human Communication
• Being recognized as scientific leaders in Human Communication Sciences and Disorders

The Clinical Programs provide a continuity of science to service and discoveries in the labs facilitate recovery in the lives of those we serve.

This mission permeates our department’s activities of teaching, research, and service. It impacts the preparation of our students for clinical careers in service to those with communication disorders as well as the education of our students who will go on to other careers. The success of this mission is evidenced most through the accomplishments in research of our tenure track faculty, the excellence in clinical instruction provided by our clinical faculty, and the success of our graduates. These factors have contributed to the Department’s top ten ranking for programs in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology for over a decade.

A lot has changed over 80 years: from 1931, when Speech and Voice and Drama were separated from the English department and became their own department in the College of Fine Arts and we started clinical services, to the 1950′s with our growing faculty, and on to 1971, when the Department of Speech and Hearing was established. Read an early history of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at The University of Arizona.

Over the years, our faculty have been honored both by the University and by national organizations:

The Galileo Circle Fellows

• Elena Plante
• Brad H. Story

Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

• Daniel R. Boone – also Past President of ASHA (1976) Past VP of ASHA (1969)
• Ralph Shelton
• Richard Curlee
• Noel Matkin
• Theodore J. Glattke
• Thomas J.Hixon
• Audrey L. Holland
• Kathryn A. Bayles

Fellows of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

• Richard Curlee
• Daniel Boone
• Ralph Shelton
• Noel Matkin
• William Hodgson
• Theodore J. Glattke
• Thomas J. Hixon
• Kathryn Bayles
• Pelagie Beeson
• Barbara Cone-Wesson
• Elena Plante
• Jeanette Hoit
• Julie Barkmeier-Kraemer

Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America

• Brad Story

Journal Editors

• Richard L. Curlee, Seminars in Speech-Language Pathology
• Thomas J. Hixon, Journal of Speech, Language, Hearing Research
• Ralph Shelton, Cleft Palate Journal
• Theodore J. Glattke, Jounal of Communication Disorders