USU Professor Honored for Clinical Advancements

The Utah Speech Language and Hearing Association recently honored Utah State University’s Vicki Simonsmeier with its prestigious Louis M. DiCarlo Award for 2010. Simonsmeier is an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.

 

The Louis M. DiCarlo Award is given for advancement of knowledge in clinical practices through significant recent accomplishments in audiology or speech language pathology in the past six years.

 

“This award is very important for the department because the cornerstone of what we do professionally is to provide competent clinical services to children and adults with communication disorders,” said Sandra Gillam, associate professor of communicative disorders and deaf education at USU. “This award is appropriate recognition for the contributions she has made to USU and to speech language pathology across the state of Utah and beyond.”

 

Simonsmeier and John Ribera, also a professor in the department, were on the executive council of Utah Speech-Language-Hearing Association at the same time. They came up with the idea for the formation of the Intermountain Associations of Speech and Hearing conferences, which bring speech language pathologists and audiologists from Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho together for a single conference on a yearly basis.

 

“The curriculum at our three-day conference can provide a breadth of topics, but we also can provide a clinical track, a medical track and a hearing/audiology track,” said Simonsmeier. “This expands the knowledge base of the professionals working in the field and keeps them abreast of the newest techniques and cutting-edge research. This is very important for keeping our skills at the highest level.”

 

Gillam said Simonsmeier’s specialty area is in oral, motor and feeding issues for children with complex communication needs. Clinicians from all over the West are impacted by Simonsmeier’s unique knowledge in this area, partly because of the impact of the yearly conference.

 

Simonsmeier is dually certified in speech-language pathology and audiology; only about 5 percent of the professional organization is dually certified. In addition, she was honored for her clinical work at USU over the past 10 years.

 

“My clinical work is what I love,” said Simonsmeier. “I’ve been involved in some survey research work in parent perceptions of the counseling they receive prior to cochlear implant surgery for their child, and I’m working on a survey now about how parents make decisions about the health care treatments they choose for their special needs child.”  

 

 

Writer: Yunlu Zhang, 435-797-1350, y.zhang@aggiemail.usu.edu