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My own experience with stuttering throughout my life led me to pursue a degree in speech and hearing science. For much of my life stuttering had led me to think about my own speech and to develop my own theories about why I stuttered. This has also led me to develop an interest in speech production in general. By the time I reached college I was able to take classes in the areas of psycholinguistics and motor behavior, and I found many of the topics discussed quite fascinating. So it was my own experience with stuttering that led to a further interest in normal aspects (such as sentence planning and speech motor control) as well as an interest in how behavior organizes to achieve any behavioral goal. I selected Iowa for doctoral study because of the many great professors in the area of speech and language. In particular, Dr. Patricia Zebrowski also shared an interest in stuttering, and is one of the foremost experts in the world on the subject. I have been very fortunate to have her as my mentor. I had also done undergraduate course work at The University of Iowa and had enjoyed living in Iowa City, so joining the department at Iowa was any easy choice to make. The time I spent in the Department were some of best times of my life, both in terms of the number of great people I was able to meet and in terms of my academic development. Currently I am working on a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University. The lab I currently work in has been conducting research for a number of years on the relation between stuttering and emotions in young children who stutter. I have been fortunate to learn about some new perspectives on this topic and how emotional processes can influence speech. In the future I would like to research the origin of natural disruptions in speech as well as instances of stuttering and how they are influenced by overall social and communicative goals. Hopefully I will be able to make a significant contribution to not only stuttering, but speech production in general. |
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