Robert Fox, chair and professor, and Roy Koenigsknecht, professor, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, were recently honored by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) for their contributions to the professions of speech-language pathology, audiology, and speech and hearing science.

Koenigsknecht was recognized with the Honors of the Association, the highest honor ASHA bestows, for contributions of such excellence that they have enhanced or altered the course of communication sciences and disorders. Fox was honored with a Fellowship of the Association, one of the highest honors ASHA bestows, for outstanding contributions to the discipline of communication sciences and disorders.

For more than 40 years, Koenigsknecht has been a distinguished teacher, scholar, mentor, and leader-innovator in communication disorders.  His scholarship has integrated basic research in child language development, innovative clinical applications for children with Specific Language Impairments, and outreach to shape professional practice. During a decade as dean of the Graduate School at Ohio State, he maintained his currency in the field through service on the ASHA executive board, including serving as president, and on the NIH Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Advisory Board during which time he chaired the development of a national strategic research plan for Speech Disorders.

According to the ASHA citation, "Koenigsknecht’s record of scholarship, publications, and national and international presentations makes him a giant of the field of communication disorders. His collaboration with Laura Lee and their book, Interactive Language Development Teaching, helped form the foundation for future national work on child language intervention programs."

An ASHA fellow, Koenigsknecht was a central advocate for the creation of the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at NIH, serving as chair of its National Strategic Resarch Plan for Speech and Speech Disorders.  

Koenigsknecht earned his MA and PhD in speech and language pathology at Northwestern University where he was director of the Speech and Language Clinics and chairperson of the Department of Communication Sciences/Disorders.

Fox’s research/teaching  involves sociophonetics, speech perception, speech acoustics and second-language acquisition and he is co-director (with Ewa Jacewicz) of SPA Labs. He is the author or co-author of numerous publications and presentations and was elected a Fellow of ASA in 1996.   His professional activities have included being an associate editor of JASA and a member of the executive board of CSDCAS. He also serves as a statistical consultant for several professional publishers and as an expert witness in forensic phonetics.

Fox earned his PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1978. He joined Ohio State in 1979 (in linguistics) and moved to the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 1983 where he has been chair since 1995.