Research

• Dr. Froma P. Roth (Principal Investigator) and colleagues were recently awarded a three-year $2.5 million dollar Early Reading First Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The goal of the project, "Partnering for Literacy: A Multi-Disciplinary Program for Emergent Literacy and Early Reading Success", is to promote emergent literacy and oral language skills of 3- and 4-year-old preschool children who are at risk for learning to read when they enter first grade. The University of Maryland project will be in collaboration with three public charter schools in Washington D.C.: Bridges Public Charter School, Tri-Community Public Charter School, and E. L. Haynes Public Charter School.
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) support Dr. Monita Chatterjee's work on complex auditory perception with cochlear implants and Dr. Sandra Gordon-Salant's research on speech perception in the elderly.
• Dr. Rochelle Newman's work has also been supported by NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
• Drs. Chatterjee and Gordon-Salant are faculty members on the NIH training grant for the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH).

Teaching

• Kate Skinker received a 2005 Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
• Dr. Froma Roth has twice received the Outstanding Teaching Award from the campus Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE).
• Dr. Nan Bernstein Ratner is a recent Lilly Teaching Fellow of the same center.

Service

• Dr. Bernstein Ratner is an editor for Seminars in Speech and Language and the Journal of Fluency Disorders. She is a consultant on program grants for the NIH and NSF.
• Dr. Gordon-Salant has served as the editor of the Hearing section for the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, a top journal in the field.
• Dr. Gordon-Salant was also asked to serve as a member of the National Academy's Institute of Medicine, "Committee on Medical Evaluation of Veterans for Disability Compensation."
• Dr. Roth is president-elect of the Division of Communicative Disorders and Deafness of the Council for Exceptional Children.
• Dr. Gordon-Salant, Dr. Bernstein Ratner, Dr. Roth, & Dr. Carmen Brewer are all Fellows of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
• Dr. Newman is an editor for the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
• Dr. Barbara Sonies is a recipient of the Honors of the Association from ASHA.
• Lynn Perlroth has received the 2001 Community Advocacy Award from Montgomery County for her work in assisting senior citizens with hearing losses through Aural Rehabilitation outreach classes.
• Vivian Sisskin serves as Coordinator of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Special Interest Division 4, Fluency and Fluency Disorders.

• Vivian Sisskin was the host of a live online discussion for the Washington Post. The discussion focused on advice and treatment strategies for parents who have children that stutter. She gave detailed answers to 18 questions during the discussion. The questions ranged from adolescents who continue to stutter despite therapy to children with less common forms of stuttering where they elongate the first syllable of a word instead of repeating it.