This is an exciting time for the Dept. of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Maryland!  Our department has a long tradition of excellence in research, and is unique in its strong focus on integrative collaborations both within the department and with other units on campus and in the community.  Faculty, students and alumni of our program take pride in our regional, national and international visibility as a cutting-edge research and clinical facility with a strong emphasis on community outreach and clinical training.

Excellence in both basic and applied research

Our faculty and students conduct cutting-edge research in speech, language, and hearing sciences. Our research includes both clinically applied work and basic science that addresses communication and communicative disorders across the lifespan, from infancy through the elder years.   From management of hearing impairment, to restoration of speech and language following injury and illness, to development of language skills in childhood, HESP makes contributions that help improve the lives of Maryland residents, and individuals with hearing, speech, voice, fluency and language disorders across the globe.  

The number of funded researchers in the department is higher than ever before, with 5 tenure-track faculty currently PIs on federally funded grants from NIH and NSF (some with multiple grants).  Our faculty also are successful in obtaining research grants within the university to promote collaborative research and launch innovative projects.

Multidisciplinary collaborations

Our faculty is highly engaged in multidisciplinary collaborative research within the campus, the University of Maryland System, and the local research community.  We collaborate with colleagues in the Colleges of Engineering, Arts and Humanities, Public Health, Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, and Education, as well as with colleagues in the Center for the Advanced Study of Language.  We also collaborate with colleagues at the University of Maryland Medical Center, the NIH, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and the Johns Hopkins University.  Our faculty are foundational members of a number of major interdisciplinary programs, including the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH), the Maryland Language Science Center, the University of Maryland Autism Research Consortium (UMARC), the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, and the Infant and Child Studies Consortium.  Maryland is home to the largest and most integrated community of language scientists in North America, and our faculty and students (at all levels) benefit from these cross-disciplinary ties and the many opportunities they bring.

Supporting our community

Our renowned clinic provides speech, language, and hearing services for individuals of all ages with a wide variety of disorders.  We focus particularly on aural rehabilitation, hearing aid fittings, treating people who stutter or who have lost communication skills due to stroke or head trauma, and working with children with developmental communication disorders. Our award-winning Language-Learning Early Advantage Preschool program (LEAP) has been recognized by both State and Federal groups as a model for the successful treatment of young children at risk for educational failure due to delayed or disordered early language development.

We also place a strong emphasis on outreach to our greater community; we believe that engaged scientists and clinicians are better scientists and clinicians, and a listing of some ways we are involved in our community can be found here.

Educating the next generation of clinicians and researchers

HESP offers four degrees, along with participation in the campus NACS PhD program: we have an excellent undergraduate BA program that prepares students to attend graduate programs in Speech-Language Pathology or Audiology. We offer two clinical graduate degree programs, the MA in Speech-Language Pathology and the AuD in Audiology. Finally, we offer the PhD degree in Hearing and Speech Sciences to prepare future generations of researchers and faculty in the field of communication sciences and disorders.  We also offer two joint-degree programs:  the AuD/PhD in clinical audiology, and a joint MA/PhD in speech-language pathology.  Our graduate students have been and continue to be outstanding, regularly winning competitive research and travel awards, including funding from the NSF and the American Academy of Audiology (AAA).  Our undergraduate and graduate students are highly engaged in research, as co-authors on conference presentations (18 undergrads, 75 grads in the last three years) and as co-authors on peer-reviewed publications (2 undergraduates, 13 grads).  Our MA and AuD students receive outstanding training through our award-winning clinic, and are selected routinely for prestigious training programs and highly competitive clinical positions.