A Note From the Chair
Sam Brown, Chair, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Over the past decade or so, the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) has undergone several name changes. The present name is consistent with a majority of other similar departments around the nation and more adequately reflects the true nature of the department—the study of the science of human communication and the communicatively disordered population.
Like many programs in the college and throughout the university, CSD, which is housed in Dauer Hall, has experienced considerable growth in the past decade at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Speech-language pathology and audiology practitioners are in great demand in our public schools, hospitals, private practices and industry throughout the state and the nation. UF students find this open job market appealing and the speech-language-hearing profession to be an exciting and challenging one. Presently, the on-campus program in CSD has over 420 undergraduate students enrolled in the major, and approaching 100 graduate majors seeking their master's and doctoral degrees. Along with the PhD, one of the more exciting degree programs instituted this past academic year is the Doctor of Audiology degree (AuD), which is a shared clinical degree by both CLAS and the College of Health Professions. The on-campus AuD program presently enrolls 15 new students each Fall, in a four-year program, and has well over 200 students enrolled in the distance learning program throughout the USA. The distance learning program is tailored to MA audiology practitioners who wish to upgrade their professional skills and to obtain the AuD, which will serve as the entry level degree into the audiology profession by the year 2007.
The 20 faculty members in the department conduct research in nearly all aspects of normal and disordered communication, including voice, phonetics, phonology, language, neurogenics, disfluency, hearing, and augmentative and alternative communication. The Institute for Advanced Study of the Communication Processes (IASCP), also housed in Dauer Hall, serves as the research arm of the department where various grants and contracts from NIH, NSF, DOE, the military and private agencies help support faculty/student research.
Finally, the department administers the UF Speech and Hearing Clinic, offering outpatient services to speech-language-hearing impaired individuals in the university and the greater Gainesville community. The clinic services more than 350 patients per year and provides one of several primary practicum sites for graduate students in both speech language pathology and audiology.
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Sam Brown
