Reviews for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention are complete

 I am on the Speech Sound Disorders in Children Committee for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention. Today I completed all of my reviews of the abstracts submitted for consideration to be presented at the conference in November.

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia - Panel D Fellowship Committee meeting

Today was my first meeting on the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) - Panel D Fellowship Committee meeting. We considered carefully the impressive contributions of the nominees to become Fellows of ASSA. What a privilege to spend time with esteemed colleagues discussing the research of notable Australians.

Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of New South Wales

It has been an honour to serve on the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of New South Wales for 2023 and 2024. The Royal Society of NSW is the oldest learned institution in the Southern Hemisphere. Today was my last meeting on the committee before the 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM). I have enjoyed the meetings with the committee members:

• Committee Members: Professor Sean Brawley (FMAC Chair), Trevor Danos AM (FMAC Secretary), Pamela Griffith OAM, Professor Sharynne McLeod, Professor George Paxinos AO, Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver AM, Professor Peter Shergold AC, Professor Ian H Sloan AO, Professor Donald Hector AM
  
• Ex Officio Committee Members: RSNSW President, RSNSW Secretary 

The minutes of the meeting stated "Today is Professor Sharynne McLeod’s final meeting. Professor Sharynne McLeod was thanked for her strong contributions on the Committee."

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee

The work of the ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee is done. We have reviewed the abstracts, (accepted/rejected/recommended changes), reviewed the submitted video presentations (accepted/recommended changes), created the ECV2024 Conference Proceedings book. Our work is done. Over to the Organising Committee for the next steps. Thanks to Dr Suzanne Hopf and Dr Leanne Gibbs for chairing the  ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee.

Suzanne Hopf, Sharynne McLeod, Leanne Gibbs

 

ECV2024 - presentations and planning

This week is the due date for ECV2024 conference presentations. We have had a number of meetings today to coordinate the launch and the quality checking of the submitted presentations by the Scientific Review Committee. We also now have the Multilingual Children's Speech stream of the ECV2024 conference available for early viewing. There is a lot to do - and a lot of great research to share.

ECV2024 conference secretary and chairs: Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne, Belinda Downey

ECV2024 Launch (aka "fun") committee: Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne, Van Tran, Sarah Bartlett, Belinda Downey

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee chairs: Kate Crowe, Sharynne, Suzanne Hopf, Leanne Gibbs

Panel D Committee of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA)

I have been invited to be on the Panel D Committee of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) https://socialsciences.org.au/ for a three-year term commencing from the AGM next month. What an honour. 

The Chair of the committee,  Emeritus Professor Donald Byrne wrote 

"The Committee's work is crucial to the overall functioning of the Academy in ensuring a broad voice for the disciplines of Education, Psychology and Health Sciences in all of the Academy's activities."

From the website

“The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia is an elected body of over 700 leading researchers and professionals across the social science disciplines…a peak body for the social sciences and a distinguished, independent membership organisation, gathering the best and brightest social science minds from universities, research institutes and policy agencies across the country. These are the people whose research shapes government decision-making, whose advice is called on by Australia’s leaders, and whose expertise has long played a key role in shaping our nation.” (https://socialsciences.org.au/academy/)

Invitation - ASHA Speech Sound Disorders in Children Topic Committee

I have been invited to be part of the 2025 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention Planning Committee as a member of the Speech Sound Disorders in Children Topic Committee by Dr. Carol Koch and Dr. Amy Graham. The 2025 ASHA Convention will be held in Washington, DC. 

Here is what they wrote:

The ASHA Convention is the largest continuing education experience each year attended by over 15,000 clinicians, researchers, students, and related professionals. We are extending an invitation to you to be part of the 2025 ASHA Convention Planning Committee as a member of the Speech Sound Disorders in Children Topic Committee.  
 
Agreeing to serve in this volunteer role means that you will participate in the peer-review process for convention submissions from April 24th to May 13th, 2025. As part of this process, you will review and score approximately 10-12 narrative submissions for oral seminars, technical sessions, and poster presentations. Your review will help determine the inclusion of each submission in the 2025 ASHA Convention Program... This topic committee will also provide input on invited presentations/topics...

I have accepted their invitation. It is an honour to serve ASHA in this way. I have had the pleasure of serving on committees such as these since 2003.

ECV2024 - abstract outcomes

The Scientific Review Committee have finished their reviews. All authors have now been advised whether or not their abstract has been accepted. Overall, 72 abstracts were accepted (18 with revisions) and 2 abstracts were rejected.

ECV2024 - Abstract submission closed

Abstract submission has closed for the ECV2024 conference. We have had 74 abstracts submitted from 23 countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Fiji, Hong Kong (SAR China), Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Kingdom, USA, Uzbekistan. 

We have another 50+ abstracts for our multilingual children's speech stream. We hope to have a diverse range of quality papers presented at the conference in November.

Dr Carolyn Gregoric (ECV2024 conference secretary) closing off abstract submission

The chairs of the ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee met and have allocated the papers for review.

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee Chairs:
Dr Suzanne Hopf, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Leanne Gibbs

We have 427 registrations for ECV2024 and the quality and range of papers look amazing.

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee

The abstracts for the ECV2024 Conference are due on 29th July - so today we had the ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee meeting and learned how to review abstracts.

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee chairs: Dr Suzanne Hopf, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Leanne Gibbs

ECV2024 publications committee

Our ECV2024 publications committee had an exciting meeting today.

Our book from ECV2020 is in the final page proofing stage before publication:

Mahony, L., McLeod, S., Salamon, A., Dwyer, J. (Eds.) (2024, in press). Early childhood voices: Children, families, professionals. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/9783031564833

We have had conversations with commissioning editors from Multilingual Matters and Springer for two books to be published based on papers from ECV2022 and ECV2024

ECV2024 publications committee:
Dr Shukla Sikder, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sheena Elwick,
Dr Helen Blake, Arifa Rahman (Dr Suzanne C. Hopf)

ECV2024 Children’s Voices Committee - ready for children's input

The ECV2024 Children’s Voices Committee had a very productive and creative meeting today. We are planning to have two child-focussed tasks at ECV2024. We are asking children to test these ideas/questions for our upcoming conference. Then we will invite the world's children to participate:

ECV2024 Children's Voices Committee - 27 Feb 2024

1. CHILDREN PLAYING (for all children) 

Draw (make/create) yourself playing 

Tell me about your picture … 

1. What are you doing in the picture? • What are you playing? • What are you playing with? 
2. Where are you playing? 
3. Are you playing with someone? yes/no • Who are you playing with? • Are you talking? • What are you talking about? 
4. Which one are you?
5. How do you feel about playing?
6. How is playing good for the world? 

2. CHILDREN’S SOLULTIONS (for older children) 

How would you make the world a better place? Pitch your solution by writing a story or making a presentation (e.g., PowerPoint) 

THANK YOU FROM THE ECV2024 CHILDREN’S VOICES COMMITTEE

RSNSW Fellows and Members Assessment Committee

It has been an honour to serve on the Royal Society of NSW Fellows and Members Assessment Committee this year. https://royalsoc.org.au/council-members-section/506-rsnsw-fellows-and-members-assessment-committee

In her final letter for the year, the President of the RSNSW has stated This November meeting will be part of the Society’s 1318th Ordinary General Meeting (OGM). One of the agenda items will enable me to announce the names of the newest members of the Society — four Associate Members, six Members, and 14 Fellows. This brings me to thank Sean Brawley FRSN, Chair, Trevor Danos AM FRSN, Secretary, and all members of the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee for their wonderful contributions to the Society this year.

Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of NSW

Dr Susan Pond, President of the Royal Society of NSW invited me to become a member of one the RSNSW Council Committees, the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee (FMAC) https://royalsoc.org.au/council-members-section/506-rsnsw-fellows-and-members-assessment-committee. 

"The purpose of the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee is to lead the Fellowship (including Honorary and Distinguished Fellows) and Membership (including Associate Membership) Assessment (FMA) Program of the Society on behalf of Council. The FMA Program is designed to assess nominations of individuals wishing to become members of the Society according to criteria outlined in the Rules for Members, Fellows, and Distinguished Fellows." The terms of reference are here: https://royalsoc.org.au/images/easyblog_docs/RSNSW_TOR_FMAC_Committee_20210317.pdf 

The 2022 membership is:

• Chair: Professor Sean Brawley FRSN 
• Secretary: Professor Simon Ringer FRSN FTSE
• Members:
  
• Scientia Professor Rose Amal AC FRSN FAA FTSE, 
• Emeritus Professor The Hon. Peter Baume AC DistFRSN, 
• Ms Pamela Griffith OAM FRSN, 
• Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver AM FRSN, 
• Emeritus Professor Ian Sloan AO FRSN FAA, 
• Mr Rod Stowe PSM FRSN

Working in a culturally and linguistically diverse society: Position Statement and Practice Guide

I just recieved an official thank you from Speech Pathology Australia for my role (over 2+ years) on the working party to revise the "Working in a culturally and linguistically diverse society – revision of Position Statement and Practice Guide". It was an extensive role - that was capably led by my colleague A/Prof Sarah Verdon. The new documents are innovative and extend beyond the thinking for most (if not all) other professional associations.

ECV2022 update, planning, and committee meetings

There has been a lot of work this week for ECV2022: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2022/

Here are the current numbers: 

• 1206 registrations from 69 countries 
• 118 abstracts from 25 countries 

A number of meetings have been held today including:

• ECV2022 Chairs meeting about keynotes, social media, submissions, panel discussions, ethics, copyediting, etc.
  
• ECV2022 Scientific Committee information session about ECV2022 conference abstract review
• ECV2022 Children's Voices Committee to plan the invitations to be sent across the world for children to contribute to ECV2022

ECV2022 Scientific Review Committee: Kelly Tribolet, Sharynne McLeod, Anne McLeod, Jessamy Davies, Kate Martgetson, Linda Mahony, Van Tran, Libbey Murray, Jahirul Mullick

 

IALP's new book: Addressing communication disorders in unserved and underserved populations

The following book has just been published to celebrate the centenary of IALP: 

Levey. S. & Enderby, P. (Eds.). Addressing communication disorders in unserved and underserved populations. J&R Press. 

We wrote the following chapters 

Chapter 8: Phạm, B., McLeod, S. & Verdon, S., Margetson, K. & Tran, V. H. (2022). Supporting the communication of underserved children in Vietnam. In S. Levey & P. Enderby & (Eds.). Addressing communication disorders in unserved and underserved populations (pp. 73-83). J&R Press. 

Chapter 10: Grech, H., Wren, Y., Pascoe, M., & McLeod, S. & Hopf, S. (2022). Speech sound disorders in underserved or unserved populations. In S. Levey & P. Enderby & (Eds.). Addressing communication disorders in unserved and underserved populations. J&R Press. 

 

Here is the description of the book on the publisher's website (https://www.jr-press.co.uk/the-unserved.html#):

The International Association of Logopaedics and Phoniatrics (IALP), now called The International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders, was established in 1924. Its objective is to bring together professionals to promote research and clinical practice to support the needs of those with communication and swallowing disorders who lack health and other basic services. The Unserved, authored by members of the Association, celebrates 100 years of the IALP by presenting ideas to assist all those who work with children and adults who have difficulty in communicating or swallowing in order to improve services for unserved and underserved communities. It offers strategies to address disorders and conditions that affect many areas of everyday life and which are exacerbated by lack of adequate health, education and social services.

International Symposium on Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 2022

The International Symposium on Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) (6-9 April 2022) is a hybrid conference with both on site and online presentations and events at the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Université des Acadiens et Créoles). https://speechandlanguage.louisiana.edu/international-symposium-monolingual-and-bilingual-speech-ismbs-2022 

Kate Margetson and I are chairing a session each (starting ~6:30am our time!) and over three days are virtually presenting three papers from our VietSpeech research:

1. VietSpeech: Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech and language competence (Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Verdon, Kate Margetson, Van H. Tran, Cen Wang, Ben Pham) 
2. The VietSpeech Multilingual Transcription Protocol: A 4-step process for transcribing Vietnamese-Australian children’s speech (Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Verdon, Van H. Tran) 
3. Cross-linguistic transfer during multilingual speech acquisition: A longitudinal Vietnamese-English case study (Kate Margetson, Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Verdon, Van H. Tran) 

Additionally, I am on the ISMBS International Scientific Committee https://speechandlanguage.louisiana.edu/international-symposium-monolingual-and-bilingual-speech-ismbs/ismbs-international-scientific

It has been an inspiring conference with fascinating papers from across the world.

Recognising Excellence Daily: Thanks from the Provost

CSU has a process called RED: Recognising Excellence Daily. Today I recieved a RED award from the Provost thanking me for my work on the Professorial Promotions Committee. It was a privilege to serve on the committee. CSU employs some fantastic people.

On behalf of the University and Academic Portfolio, and as Chair of the Academic Promotions Professorial Committee, I wanted to personally thank you for the valuable contributions you made to this year’s Academic Promotions process. As you are well aware, Academic Promotions provide an important means of encouraging and recognising staff development and rewarding those who have demonstrated and sustained excellence. The significant time and support you have committed to this process not only benefits our academics and their careers, it also strengthens our University, the reputation of our University, and our ability to continue achieving our mission and changing the lives of our students and communities for the better. This year we had a terrific outcome, with 78 per cent of applications successful. This is an impressive 15 per cent increase on last year and could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of our Promotions Committees. 

I trust you enjoyed the process and I hope you will continue to contribute to our Promotions Committees in the years to come. 

Kind regards John Germov, Provost

 

CSU Professorial Promotions Committee

I have just finished reviewing a large number of applications for the CSU Professorial Promotions Committee that is meeting next week. Almost every application had over 60 pages of evidence. It has been a huge, but very fascinating task. There are many extremely impressive people at CSU!