March 23, 2018

Welcome Van

Last week Van Tran commenced her PhD at CSU. She will be supervised by Dr Sarah Verdon and myself and is studying via distance education. This week was her first visit to Bathurst. Van is part of our VietSpeech team and comes with a wealth of experience. She already has been awarded a PhD in linguistics from the University of Wollongong and is a NAATI accredited Vietnamese-English interpreter. Welcome Van!
Dr Van Tran with her PhD supervisors Dr Sarah Verdon and Prof Sharynne McLeod
Ben Pham, Vice Chancellor Andy Vann, Dr Van Tran
Van at the Carillion in Bathurst

March 22, 2018

First VietSpeech team meeting

Last year we were awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery grant titled "Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence" (for 2018-2020). Since this time we have been recruiting project officers and a PhD student and preparing our ethics application. Our team live in Bathurst, Sydney and Albury, so today (and tomorrow) marks our first face-to-face team meeting. We have enjoyed meeting one another and planning the studies. Van Tran, our VietSpeech PhD student, met the Vice Chancellor on her first day on campus at CSU! He wished us well in our project (along with members of Academic Senate and Faculty Board who applauded during the respective meetings over the past 2 weeks when our project was announced). We hope that our work will have an impact on Vietnamese language maintenance in Australia, and will support Vietnamese-English children's speech and language competence. 

Van Tran, Vice Chancellor Andy Vann, Sarah Verdon, Ben Pham, Audrey Wang, Sharynne McLeod
Audrey, Ben, Sharynne, Van and Sarah

March 14, 2018

Farewell Professor Linda Harrison

Professor Linda Harrison has worked at Charles Sturt University for 25 years in the field of early childhood education. She developed the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF) with Prof Jennifer Sumsion and was on the advisory group for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). She has has a strong influence on researchers and research at CSU, including in her role as the inaugural Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Arts and Education. We have worked together for 14 years (see here). She is moving to Macquarie University and tonight was her farewell party. It was a wonderful time of celebration. We will miss her greatly.
Some of the people celebrating Linda's contribution to CSU
Carol Burgess (Head, School of Teacher Education), Dr Peter Wilson, Prof Linda Harrison, Prof Sharynne McLeod
Prof Linda Harrison, Emeritus Prof Bob Meyenn (previous Dean of Education), Prof Sharynne McLeod
Dr Shuka Sikder, Dr Audrey Wang, Prof Linda Harrison, Mark Situ

March 13, 2018

Reviewing ICPLA abstracts

Over the past few days I have been reviewing abstracts submitted to be considered for presentation at the upcoming conference of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association. I have reviewed them in my role as vice president and member of the scientific committee. Over 180 abstracts have been submitted - and the ones I have reviewed have been excellent. I am looking forward to seeing the final program and to hearing them presented at the conference in Malta in October.

March 10, 2018

Teaching year 2 students about working with children with speech sound disorders

I have been invited to teach SPH201: Speech Impairment in Children to the year 2 students at Charles Sturt University in Albury due to the illness of their allocated lecturer. They were using the textbook that Elise Baker and I had written titled "Children's Speech", so it seemed sensible that I teach them when the vacancy arose. I met some of the class while I was in Albury last week (they are great!) and will teach them via distance from Bathurst. I look forward to working with them to unpack the evidence underpinning clinical practice for working with children with speech sound disorders.

Visiting Albury

Last week I visited the Albury campus of Charles Sturt University. While there I
  • attended Academic Senate as the Professorial Representative, 
  • worked with Dr Sarah Verdon on the ethics for our VietSpeech Australian Research Council Grant, 
  • gave a public lecture to celebrate 20 years of the speech pathology program at CSU
  • worked with my PhD student Nicole McGill on data protocols, 
  • met with Dr Jane McCormack and discussed our invited journal article on children's perspectives on their speech,
  • visited the staff and students in the School of Community Health, 
  • and drove 5.5 hours each way between Bathurst and Albury. 
It was a busy but fulfilling few days.
Meeting with Nicole McGill
(before we got our computers out and started typing into spreadsheets!)

March 8, 2018

Public lecture to celebrate 20 years of speech pathology at Charles Sturt University

I was honoured to be invited to present a public lecture to celebrate 20 years of speech pathology at Charles Sturt University on Wednesday 7th March in Albury. I was a lecturer/senior lecturer in the speech pathology program from 1999-2003, so was involved in the establishment of the program.

The title of my lecture was "Communication as a Human Right: Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and I presented our current work to celebrate communication rights within the special issue of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. The CSU media release about the event is here.
Some of the audience after the public lecture speaking up for communication rights

March 5, 2018

Increasing the reach of our research via Twitter

Over the past 2 weeks (20 Feb - 5 March) my tweets have earned "28.8K impressions" (even though I am only following 77 people and have 571 followers), with a daily average of 12 link clicks, 10 retweets, and 16 likes. It is so great to think that this many people are thinking about communication rights. Let's hope that they are also ensuring that people they come across in their daily lives have the right to communicate. #SpeakUp4CommRights


Speech Pathology Australia have launched a supporting website to promote communication rights: http://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SpeakUp