Communication Sciences and Disorders PhD

The Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders is a research-based degree designed to train doctoral candidates to become productive scholars and educators in their field. Students in the program will receive training and experience in all aspects of the research process, including conducting research studies and analyzing data, presenting and writing up research, applying for funding, and personal and professional integration into the international scientific community for their field of study. We emphasize the development of programmatic lines of research and follow an apprenticeship model; thus, students will participate in and eventually lead research in their primary advisor’s specialization area. Involvement in other faculty’s research labs is also strongly encouraged and facilitated. All of our doctoral faculty have strong research portfolios, and are also certified speech-language pathologists with research interests in diverse populations. Translational research, bilingualism and cross-language work characterize much of our research. The doctoral program is full-time.

Topics of study include:

• The development of outcome measures and novel, theoretically motivated treatments in (monolingual and bilingual) aphasia. Eye tracking methodology to investigate cognitive and linguistic processing in acquired neurogenic disorders and in healthy adult populations.
• The study of cultural and environmental factors that affect young children’s language and literacy development, as well as the development of school readiness assessments and interventions, with a focus on bilingual populations.
• Effects of speech cues and treatment for increasing intelligibility across languages in children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy and in adults with Parkinson Disease.
• Speech perception and production in second language learning.
• Improving health outcomes and quality of life associated with disorders of airway protection (i.e., swallowing and coughing) by 1) identifying the mechanisms of swallowing dysfunction to determine targets for treatment and 2) developing and testing novel treatment approaches for airway protective deficits.