Kate Margetson concludes her postdoc (in Greece)

Kate Margetson has worked with me 2 days a week for 18 months on her postdoc - which concludes now. Her postdoc was funded by a Commonwealth grant to the Rural Health Research Institute.

It has been a VERY productive time focusing on supporting speech-language pathologists to work with multilingual children in unfamiliar languages.

The end of Kate's postdoc coincided with the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference in Patras, Greece. Kate presented two papers from her PhD and postdoc and had so many opportunities to network and plan the next steps of her research journey. 

It has been such a privilege to work with Kate and learn from her. I am glad she has a continuing position as a lecturer in the speech pathology course at Charles Sturt University so that we can continue to collaborate as colleagues.

Kate presenting work from her postdoc at ICPLA

Kate and Sharynne in Corinth on the way home from ICPLA

Helen Blake, Sharynne  and Kate Margetson at the ICPLA conference dinner

Kate Margetson discussed the SACHL with the President of the International Phonetics Association (IPA)

Working with my postdoc, PhD and Masters students

My postdoc, PhD and Masters students are working hard. There are so many small steps to completing a higher degree - and it is an honour to walk alongside them.

Holly McAlister: PhD supervisors Dr Suzanne Hopf and Prof Sharynne McLeod

Cathie Matthews: Masters supervisors - Sharynne McLeod, Julian Grant, Libbey Murray

Kate Margetson: Postdoc supervisor: Sharynne McLeod

ACU Speed Session: Working with multilingual children: How can I assess speech in a language that I don't speak?

The Australian Catholic University (ACU) Allied Health speed sessions for May includes an invited presentation by Kate Margetson titled "Working with multilingual children: How can I assess speech in a language that I don't speak? 

Kate Margetson is a speech pathologist and postdoctoral research fellow at Charles Sturt University. Her PhD research focussed on assessment and differential diagnosis of speech sound disorders in bilingual Vietnamese-English speaking children. Her current research focusses on supporting speech-language pathologists to work with multilingual children, particularly when they do not speak the same language(s). Kate is a certified practicing speech-language pathologist and has worked clinically for over 10 years with multilingual children and their families in both Australia and Vietnam. She is a director of Trinh Foundation Australia which has support the development of the speech pathology profession in Vietnam.

Access the recording here: https://echo360.net.au/media/93c893a0-9748-40c5-8461-b7faf7ad52ad/public

Fulbright application conversations

I have had a number of wonderful conversations with Dr Chelsea Sommer about her Fulbright Scholarship application to come to visit our team at Charles Sturt University. She is an amazing scholar with expertise in Spanish and children with cleft palate. Her project fits so well into our multilingual children's speech research. I hope her application is successful. We really want her to visit!

Sharynne and Chelsea in NZ at the IALP congress in August 2023

Sharynne and Chelsea in US and Australia on Zoom

UPDATE - 15th September - APPLICATION SUBMITTED! 

Best wishes Chelsea - we really want you to come to CSU as a Fulbright Future Postdoctoral Scholar (funded by The Kinghorn Foundation) in 2025

 

CSU Alumni Award Winners

WOW! Congratulations to two of our team who have WON the CSU Alumni Awards.

Dr Kate Crowe won the 2020 Professional Achievement – Research category

Dr Sarah Verdon won the 2020 Young Alumnus of the Year

 CSU Alumni wrote:

We are very proud to announce our 2020 Alumni Award winners and highly commended! All of whom are making an astounding impact in their field and inspiring others. We were overwhelmed by the number and quality of nominations. There truly are so many of you living and breathing the Charles Sturt University ethos Yindyamarra Winhanganha, a Wiradjuri phrase that means the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in. 

This is an amazing achievement, as the calibre of entries was incredibly high. Well done on the honour, you deserve the title!
It was originally planned for our Award winners to be presented with your trophy and certificate at the Charles Sturt University graduations in December of this year. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, our ceremonies have had to be postponed until May 2021. We would still love to celebrate your achievement at this postponed ceremony and would be honoured if you could be a guest speaker.

CONGRATULATIONS! We are so proud of you both - and all you have done throughout the world!

Kate Crowe celebrating in Reykjavik, Iceland
when she heard the news

Here are the news items and announcements celebrating their success. 

• Charles Sturt University Alumni Association Announcement: https://alumni.csu.edu.au/current-alumni/alumni-awards
• CSU News announcement: https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/inaugural-awards-celebrate-universitys-inspirational-and-impactful-alumni
  
• Verðlaunuð fyrir árangur í rannsóknum (University of Iceland): https://www.hi.is/frettir/verdlaunud_fyrir_arangur_i_rannsoknum

 

 

Continuation of postdoctoral scholarship until the end of 2020

Late last week it was confirmed that Dr Michelle Brown will be able to continue as my postdoctoral scholar (0.4FTE) until the end of 2020. The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Engagement) enabled me to reallocate some of my travel funds from my Senior Research Fellowship that can no longer be used due to COVID-19 restrictions, to employing Michelle for the remainder of the year. This is great news as her StoryBabies research is going so well, and we have so many grants, papers, presentations and analyses to complete and submit in that timeframe.

Regional Speech Pathology Forum for Albury Wodonga and North Eastern Health

Today I presented at the Regional Speech Pathology Forum for Albury Wodonga and North Eastern Health (details here: https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=586272&). It was wonderful to share the day with 76 speech pathologists from NSW and Victoria (many who had been my students at The University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University)

• I was invited to speak on the topic of "Communication and Human Rights in Speech Pathology" and presented my speech to the United Nations as well as the background story
• Dr Michelle Brown spoke on "Early Storybook Reading with Babies" summarizing her current postdoc at CSU
• Nicole McGill spoke on "Managing Speech Pathology Waiting Lists" summarizing her PhD that she submitted yesterday

Prof Sharynne McLeod

Dr Michelle Brown

Nicole McGill

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, Orlando, FL

This week, members of the SLM team are attending the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, in Orlando, FL. There were almost 3,000 papers and posters presented over the 3 days and 15,000+ attendees.
Here are the seminars/papers we are presenting:

• McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. - Children’s consonant acquisition across languages. Invited 1-hour seminar. 
• Baker, E., Williams, A. L., McCauley, R. J. & McLeod, S. - A taxonomy of phonological intervention to guide and teach clinical decision-making and fidelity of implementation. 1-hour seminar. 
• Blake, H. L., McLeod, S. & Verdon, S. - Intelligibility Enhancement assessment and intervention for multilingual university students. Technical paper. 
• Brown, M. I., Wang, C., & McLeod, S. - Parent-child book reading impacts academic achievement in Grade 3. Technical paper. 

Alyssa Boucher (Boston University), Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Kate Crowe (CSU/Iceland University), Michelle Brown (CSU), Sheila Deogtardi (Macquarie Uni) at ASHA

Sharynne, Karla Washington, Kate Crowe, Thora Masdottir, Helen Blake and Michelle Brown at the Researcher Academic Town Meeting (Wednesday night)

Sharynne, Rebecca McCauley and Lynn Williams about to present their 1-hour seminar
(Elise Baker presented via voice-over)

Speech Sound Disorders Researchers: Sharynne, Rebecca McCauley, Shelley Velleman, Greg Lof, Kelly Farquharson, Francois Brosseau Lapre, SLP, Brian Goldstein, Katy Cabbage, Jill Hoover, Sarah Masso

Sharynne and Kate Crowe presented an invited 1-hour seminar (and gave out free handouts)

Helen Blake about to present her paper

Dr Michelle Brown about to present her second paper

Michelle Brown, Sheila Degotadi, Sharynne, Lynn Williams (2021 ASHA President), Kate Crowe

John Bernthal and Sharynne catch up every year at the ASHA convention.
Sharynne is currently updating a book chapter in the 9th edition of John's book

Sharynne, Shelley Velleman, Amy Glaspey, Brian Goldstein

Sharynne, Michelle, Kate and Helen sampling Harry Potter's butter beer (100% sugar!)

Helen, Sharynne, Lynn, Michelle, Kate and Marie Ireland at the Harry Potter World ASHA closing party

Macquarie Infants and Toddlers Conference

This week is the Third Infants and Toddlers Conference at Macquarie University in Sydney. Anna Cronin (my PhD student) and Dr Michelle Brown (my postdoc) are attending. Michelle is presenting  "Reading during infancy strengthens academic achievement" (Brown, Wang & McLeod) at the conference.  Here is her abstract

Reading books is an important activity that early childhood educators and parents can undertake to promote early communication development. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to “freedom of expression” (Article 13) and “development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential” (Article 29). To support children reaching their fullest potential, the present study examined the long-term benefits for language and literacy achievement in Grades 3 and 5 from book-reading at 1-2 years. Participants were 3547 infants and their caregivers from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The relationship between the number of minutes per day caregivers reported reading with their infant and the child’s language and literacy subtests from the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Grades 3 and 5 was examined, using a series of regression analyses. The duration of book reading at 1-2 years positively predicted language and literacy outcomes in Grades 3 and 5. This research provides evidence to support early childhood educators, parents, and clinicians to encourage daily book-reading with infants to strengthen later language and literacy achievement.

Dr Michelle Brown presenting her research

Michelle Brown and Anna Cronin on the first morning of the Infants and Toddlers Conference

Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) Conference

The Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) 2019 Conference was held in Melbourne 9-12 July. Dr Michelle Brown presented the following paper titled: "Reading with young children promotes literacy and language development nine years later"
Authors: Michelle Brown, Cen Wang, Sharynne McLeod

Here is the abstract

Background: It is widely accepted that book-reading ameliorates later literacy and language development, however researchers examining book-reading and later academic outcomes have reported inconclusive evidence. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by examining the long-term impact for literacy and language mastery from book-reading with young children.
Method: 3547 young children and their caregivers enrolled in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children participated. Using a series of analyses, the relationship between the number of minutes young children were read to per day and the children’s Grade 5 (10-11 years) literacy and language subtests from the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) was examined.
Results: The number of minutes young children were read to, positively predicted the children’s Grade 5 (10-11 years) NAPLAN literacy and language subtests. The relationship remained significant when controlling for demographic variables and cognitive abilities.
Conclusion: This study provides evidence with a relatively large sample that reading with young children for more than 10 minutes per day can promote literacy and language outcomes nine years later. Implications for teachers, educators, future research, and policy makers are considered with the goal of empowering teachers/educators to continue advocating for book-reading with young children.

Presentations at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Brisbane, June 2019

The Speech Pathology Australia  and New Zealand Speech-language Therapists' Association Conference is being held in Brisbane 2-5 June 2019.

The conference began with an excellent workshop from Professor Susan Rvachew from McGill University in Canada titled "Input-oriented approach to phonological intervention: Why? When? How?".

Dr Alison Holm, Dr Suzanne Hopf, Dr Nicole Watts Pappas, Prof Susan Rvachew,
Dr Elise Baker, Nicole McGill, Anna Cronin, Prof Sharynne McLeod

Here are the presentations from our Charles Sturt University Speech-Language-Multilingualism team.

Oral presentations:

1. Cronin, A., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. - Expert practice for children with cleft palate across the world: Application of the ICF-CY
2. Cronin, A., Verdon, S., & McLeod, S. - What are the experiences of families of young children with cleft palate?
3. McGill, N., Crowe, K., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. - Waiting lists and prioritisation for paediatric speech pathology services: Speech pathologists’ perspectives.
4. McGill, N., Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. - “Struggling and needing help”: Experiences of waiting for speech pathology services in Australia.
5. McCormack, J., McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. - Comparing children’s and parents’ perspectives about speech in the Sound Start Study.
6. McLeod, S., Cronin, A., Masso, S., & Phạm , B. - Transcribing Vietnamese: English-speaking speech pathologists’ transcription of child and adult speech.

Poster presentations:

1. Blake, H. L., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. - Enhancing the English intelligibility of multilingual speakers.
2. Brown, M. I., Wang, C., & McLeod, S. - Reading with babies impacts literacy, language, and numeracy skills at 8-9 years.
3. Davis, E., McLeod, S., Rohr, K., Roberts, K., McGill, N., Miller, K., Thornton, S., Ahio, N. - Randomised controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of advice versus device for children on speech pathology waiting lists.
4. McGill, N., McLeod, S., Davis, E., Rohr, K., & Miller, K. - ‘Wait’ lifting: Randomised controlled trial evaluating active versus passive waiting for speech pathology by children with speech and language difficulties.
5. Lyons, R., McAllister, L., Atherton, M., Bickford, J., Bright, F., Bryant, L., Davidson, B., Easton, C., Foster, A., Hersh, D. McLeod, S., O'Halloran, R., Siyambalapitiya, S., Spencer, S., Verdon, S., & Worrall, L. - Introducing qualitative research in speech pathology.
6. Verdon, S., Wang, C., McLeod, S. & Tran, V. - Vietnamese-Australians’ language use, proficiency, and maintenance. 
7. Tran. V., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wang, C. - Factors affecting home language maintenance: A narrative review. 

SLM team at SPA2019: Back: Dr Michelle Brown, Kate Margetson, Anna Cronin, Anniek van Doornik, Sadie and Dr Sarah Verdon. Front: Helen Blake, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Prof Susan Rvachew, A/Prof Jane McCormack, Nicole McGill

Dr Michelle Brown presenting her poster

The SLM team at the conference dinner

Congratulations Kate C on your 2-year postdoc in Iceland

Dr Kate Crowe has just been offered a 2-year postdoctoral position at The University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands). They received a total of 99 applications and 10 postdocs were offered.

The title of her postdoc is "Improving Outcomes of Multilingual Children in Icelandic Preschools" and she will be working with Dr. Þóra Másdóttir (Thora Masdottir) and others in the speech therapy department. Here is her abstract.

Modern Iceland welcomes newcomers from many countries around the world, especially Poland and Lithuania. Consequently, an increasing percentage of children enrol in pre-primary education in Iceland with limited knowledge of Icelandic, experiencing delays in their Icelandic language skills compared to their monolingual peers. The impact of these delays can be seen in these children’s pre-primary education, formal schooling, and beyond. This postdoctoral study will conduct an efficacy cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate a promising educator-delivered intervention to improve the Icelandic vocabulary and language skills of 2- to 6-year-old-children in Iceland who come from homes where exposure to Icelandic is limited. The intervention will focus on the high-fidelity implementation of a researcher-developed curriculum involving interactive reading and language activity experiences using evidence-based techniques. This approach is anticipated to positively impact not only on the Icelandic skills of children who speak another language at home, but also on monolingual Icelandic-speaking children and children with speech and language delay/disorder. In the longer term, improving the linguistic and Icelandic skills of children in Iceland should provide cultural, economic, and social benefits for Iceland including increased multilingualism, social cohesion, and enhanced capacity to participate in a globalised economy. 

Congratulations Kate!

Jóhanna Thelma Einarsdóttir, Ewita Czap (University of Gdansk), Þóra Másdóttir, Þóra Sæunn Úlfsdóttir, Kathryn Crowe, and Kristelle Lou Suson Jónsdóttir at The University of Iceland

2019 students and postdocs

I am very fortunate to be working with some amazing women in 2019:

PhD students

• Helen Blake (CSU)
• Anna Cronin (CSU)
• Nicole McGill (CSU)
• Dr Van Tran (CSU)
• Natalie Hegarty (Ulster University, Northern Ireland)
• Anniek van Doornik (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) 

Postdoctoral scholar

• Dr Michelle Brown

Research fellows

• Dr Audrey Wang 
• Dr Ben Pham
• Dr Kate Crowe

as well as other members of the Speech-Language-Multilingualism team including:

• Dr Sarah Verdon
• Dr Suzanne Hopf
• Dr Sarah Masso
• Dr Jane McCormack 
• Kate Margetson

Working with Dr Audrey Wang

Next week Dr Audrey Wang's postdoctoral research fellowship ends. Over her time working at CSU I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Audrey on numerous grants and publications. She also has co-supervised and supported many of my PhD students (including Dr Sarah Masso and Dr Suzanne Hopf) and has taught them their EER502 Quantitative Research Methods. Here is a list of publications and grants we have worked on together. I look forward to future collaborations.

Journal articles
1. Wang, C., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S., Walker, S., & Spilt, J. L. (2017, in press). Can teacher-child relationships support human rights to freedom of opinion and expression, education, and participation? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
2. Hopf, S. C., McLeod, S., McDonagh, S., Wang, C., & Rakanace, E. (2017, in press). Communication disability in Fiji: Community self-help and help-seeking support. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. doi:10.1080/17549507.2017.1337226
3. Masso, S., Baker, E., McLeod, S., & Wang, C. (2017). Polysyllable speech accuracy and predictors of later literacy development in preschool children with speech sound disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, 1877-1890. doi:10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0171
4. Masso, S., McLeod, S., Wang, A. & Baker, E., & McCormack, J. (2017). Longitudinal changes in polysyllable maturity of preschool children with speech sound disorders. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 31, 424-439. doi:10.1080/02699206.2017.1305450

with 3 additional manuscripts in submission. 

Commissioned reports
5. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Wang, C. & Verdon, S. (2017). Indigenous Australian children’s speech and language: Academic outcomes and access to services. Technical report. Bathurst, Australia: Charles Sturt University.
6. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & Wang, C. (2015). NAPLAN outcomes for children identified with speech and language difficulties at age 4 to 5 years: Initial Report. Bathurst, Australia: Charles Sturt University.
7. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & Wang, C. (2015). NAPLAN outcomes for children identified with speech and language difficulties in early childhood: Second Report. Bathurst, Australia: Charles Sturt University.

Grants
8. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Wang, C. & Verdon, S. (2017). Indigenous Australian children’s speech and language: Academic outcomes and access to services. Commissioned research by Speech Pathology Australia.
9. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Wang, C. (2015). NAPLAN outcomes and trajectories for children identified with speech and language difficulties at age 4 to 5 years. Commissioned research by Speech Pathology Australia.

Sarah M's Endeavour Postdoctoral Scholarship in Newfoundland, Canada

Sarah Masso is currently in Newfoundland, Canada on her Endeavour Postdoctoral Scholarship. She is working with A/Prof Yvan Rose at Memorial University of Newfoundland for 4 months. Her project is titled: Developing innovative technology for speech pathologists. Here are her aims:

This Endeavour postdoctoral program will make the comprehensive analysis software (Phon) available for speech pathologists to save them time, money, and resources. A user-friendly interface for Phon will reduce technology barriers hindering speech pathologists’ engagement with this technology. The two key aims for this research are to work with Associate Professor Yvan Rose (linguist and Phon author) to: (1) design an interface for Phon appropriate for speech pathologists internationally, (2) incorporate clinically-useful features, including the Word-level Analysis of Polysyllables (Masso, 2016), within Phon.

Sarah's first day

Sarah picked local blueberries

Jellybean houses

International Composium on Communication Disorders in Multilingual-Multicultural Populations

Between the 24th and 25th August 2017, the 5th International Composium on Communication Disorders in Multilingual-Multicultural Populations of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) is being held at the City University of Applied Sciences Bremen (HSB) in Bremen, Germany. Helen Blake, Sarah Verdon and Kate Crowe are attending.

Franklin, Sarah, Helen and Kate in Bremen

Their presentations are:

• Blake, H. L., Bennetts-Kneebone, L., & McLeod, S. - Humanitarian Migrants’ English Language Proficiency, Self-sufficiency and Integration 
• Crowe, K., McLeod, S. & Carty, B. - Multilingual Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Learners: Languages, Choices, and Outcomes 
• Verdon, S. - Pathways towards Cultural Competence: The Efficacy of Professional Development Workshops in Creating Positive and Sustained Changes to Practice 
• Verdon, S. & Zeidler, D. - Supporting Indigenous Children’s Early Communication Development through the Co-Creation of Community-Led Services

Achievement, language, and technology use among college-bound deaf learners

Today Kate Crowe's first publication from her Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship was published online. Congratulations Kate!

Crowe, K., Marschark, M., Dammeyer, J., & Lehane, C. (in press). Achievement, language, and technology use among college-bound deaf learners. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. doi:10.1093/deafed/enx029 
Here is the abstract:

Deaf learners are a highly heterogeneous group who demonstrate varied levels of academic achievement and attainment. Most prior research involving this population has focused on factors facilitating academic success in young deaf children, with less attention paid to older learners. Recent studies, however, have suggested that while factors such as early cochlear implantation and early sign language fluency are positively associated with academic achievement in younger deaf children, they no longer predict achievement once children reach high school age. This study, involving data from 980 college-bound high school students with hearing loss, examined relations between academic achievement, communication variables (audiological, language), and use of assistive technologies (e.g., cochlear implants [CIs], FM systems) and other support services (e.g., interpreting, real-time text) in the classroom. Spoken language skills were positively related to achievement in some domains, while better sign language skills were related to poorer achievement in others. Among these college-bound students, use of CIs and academic support services in high school accounted for little variability in their college entrance examination scores. 

Fulbright Fellowship Lecture at CSU by Dr Kate Crowe

Dr Kate Crowe has just returned from the US following her Fulbright Fellowship. She has been a PhD student, postdoctoral scholar, and sessional lecturer at Charles Sturt University (CSU) over a number of years.

Today Kate presented a lecture to CSU titled:
Why potatoes aren’t vegetables: Things I’ve learnt from my Fulbright Fellowship 
Participants attended in person in Bathurst, and via video conference from Albury, Shepparton, Newcastle, Blue Mountains, and other parts of the state.

Head of School Carol Burgess presenting Dr Kate Crowe with
a gift from CSU to congratulate her on her Fulbright Fellowship

Here is the abstract of her presentation

Dr Kate Crowe left Charles Sturt University in August 2016 to become a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology (NY). The Fulbright program is the flagship international educational exchange program of the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. After spending nearly a year immersed in U.S. culture, Kate has returned to share her experiences of life and research. In this talk she will describe the research she has conducted to better understand how students with hearing loss process language and how the Fulbright program encourages collaborative research and understanding. She will also share stories about creating cultural bridges, and what happens when these bridges don’t quite meet in the middle. For example, why a potato may not be a vegetable (and how this confuses your research results)? What happens to squirrels in winter? What exactly is a cheesehead?

Kate is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University (Australia) and a member of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech. Kate has worked as a speech pathologist, academic, and researcher in a range of early childhood, school, and tertiary settings. Her research and clinical interests include communication choice and development for children with hearing loss, particularly children who use sign, live in multilingual environments, and/or have complex communication needs. Kate currently works with college-aged students who are deaf and is exploring linguistic and cognitive factors which inform how we teach deaf learners.

Dr Sarah Verdon's CSU postdoc begins

Today Dr Sarah Verdon begins a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Science at Charles Sturt University. She was one of 5 people across all fields of science to receive this position (166 people applied!). Congratulations Sarah - we look forward to seeing (and using) the research that you generate from this postdoc.

Kate Crowe's Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Program has finished

Last week Kate Crowe finished her Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Program working with Professor Marc Marschark at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
Here are the details about her Fulbright Program: https://www.fulbright.com.au/alumni/profiles/2016-alumni/
Kate's Fulbright blog is here: http://katesfubrightlife.blogspot.com

Prof Marc Marschark and Dr Kate Crowe at Rochester Institute of Technology

At the conclusion of her Fulbright she wrote:

I wasn’t sure where my Fulbright journey would take me, but at the outset I imagined that it would end at a tangible destination. A list of submitted journal papers. Conference papers to present. Future research projects in preparation. A checklist of tasks to indicate a successful scholarship. However, as I check the final items off the list, I am overwhelmed by a feeling that these tangible outcomes are not the destination that I thought they were. As Henry Miller said, “one’s destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things”. That is where my Fulbright journey has taken me. To a world that is bigger and brighter, more challenging and more rewarding than I knew. A world full of new friends, new ideas, and of exciting possibilities that I will be exploring for the rest of my life.  

During her Fulbright program she:

• collected data for five studies examining: 1. Semantic fluency skills of students who were Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing (DHH), hearing, and users of English and/or American Sign Language. 2. Students’ perceptions of word typicality related to category membership. 3. Students’ categorization skills and their cognitive flexibility in re-categorizing words. 4. The speech intelligibility of DHH college students. 5. The sign intelligibility of American Sign Language users
• engaged with university research staff in project planning, data collection, analysis, and dissemination for other research projects, some involving international collaboration
• attended American Sign Language 1 and 2 subjects (non-credit subjects)
• attended the Fulbright Enrichment seminar hosted in San Diego
• gave presentations at the American Speech-Language-Hearing association conference (Philadelphia), and keynote presentations at the Teaching Deaf Learners conference (Amsterdam) and the European Cochlear Implant Users association symposium (Helsinki).

Congratulations Kate - we are really proud of your achievements - and the fact that RIT has invited you back for next year.

Kate, Prof Marc Marschark and the RIT team