Mary Beth Schmitt, doctoral candidate in the Speech and Hearing Science Department, was awarded the 2012 American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation Student Research Grant in Early Childhood Language Development. This is a very competitive research grant awarded annually to two graduate students studying child language development or disorders. Mary Beth's study, titled "Treatment Dosage, Child Engagement, and Treatment Impacts for Children with Language Disorders" will investigate the unique and multivariate associations between engagement in therapy sessions and the amount of time spent addressing specific language targets on language gain for children receiving language therapy in the public schools. She will be honored at the ASHF breakfast during the American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention on November 16th, 2012.

Created in 1946 by a visionary leader in the field of communication sciences, Wendell Johnson, the ASHFoundation is a charitable organization that supports the advancement of knowledge in this field and seeks to improve the lives of people with speech, language, or hearing disorders. It is supported in part by the Arlene Matkin memorial fund.