Associate Professor Jean Sawyer
The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders is proud to have Associate Professor Jean Sawyer as a member of their faculty. Sawyer was honored as an ISHA fellow at the Illinois Speech-Language Hearing Association (ISHA) Convention held in February.
Sawyer was nominated by her peers for this well-deserved award due to her service as an ISHA convention fluency program track chair and her accomplishments over the years as a teacher and researcher.
“Dr. Sawyer is a valuable member of the CSD Department and the discipline of speech-language pathology,” said CSD Department Chair Ann Beck. “We are pleased that ISHA has recognized her professional accomplishments so appropriately.”
If you are a speech-language pathology graduate student in Illinois, it is likely that you have encountered Sawyer. In addition to her regular teaching load at Illinois State University, she has also taught graduate fluency classes at Northern Illinois University, Eastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois. She might have had as many as a third of the graduate students in Illinois as students!
Illinois State graduate student Salwa Khan has worked closely with Sawyer both as an undergraduate member of the National Stuttering Association (NSA) and now as Sawyer’s graduate assistant.
“Dr. Sawyer’s knowledge, reputable research, and guidance have played an integral role in my interests in working with the stuttering population,” Khan said. “Like the many of students who have been taught by Dr. Sawyer, her instruction when working with people who stutter has been valuable.”
Sawyer expressed much gratitude for this award: “I’m very pleased and honored to be an ISHA fellow. It’s a great organization and they hold a wonderful conference every year. Each year I’m able to connect with nationally known researchers in stuttering, and this year I went to a talk on multiculturalism as well. The ISHA convention is a great way to network and to see former and current students. I appreciate the support of CSD’s students, faculty and staff. I wouldn’t have been able to earn this award without the encouragement of this community.”
