From the theater stage of the Roaring Twenties to the twenty-first-century speech-language pathology clinic, Washington State College’s Division of Speech and Listening to Sciences has developed over the previous century from an artwork to a science.
The division traces its roots to 1925, when Professor Maynard Lee Daggy, namesake for Daggy Corridor, established WSU’s first Division of Speech within the College of High quality Arts.
“We’ve been right here because the starting,” mentioned Professor Emerita Gail Chermak, who served as division chair from 1990 to 2021. “That longevity speaks volumes — not nearly our price to the college and to the scientific communities we serve, but additionally concerning the worth of an training in speech and listening to sciences.”
A century of communication: From public talking to affected person care
Quickly after arriving at WSU, Daggy reorganized the present “oral expression” programs into three new items: Theatre Arts and Drama, Rhetoric and Communication Research, and Communication Issues, the latter being the forerunner of the trendy Speech and Listening to Sciences division. The nascent discipline of “speech correction” coalesced right into a nationwide affiliation in the identical interval, reflecting a rising curiosity within the subject.
“Speech is essentially the most salient facet of communication — it’s what folks discover first,” mentioned Professor Amy Meredith, chair from 2021 to 2025. “Within the early days, an emphasis on elocution and ‘appropriate speech’ was a catalyst for our career.”
World Battle II introduced extra college students to the college and accelerated the event of speech pathology as a definite discipline of well being care. Consistent with these shifts, the division’s Communication Issues unit started to undertake an more and more scientific method to addressing speech and language issues and employed its first school skilled in speech pathology.
College students gained hands-on expertise on the division’s state-of-the-art Communication Issues Clinic and later by means of a partnership with a personal clinic in Spokane, which might develop right into a regional hub for medical training and specialised well being care. This system acquired accreditation by the mid-Nineteen Seventies, now granting grasp’s levels in speech pathology and audiology.
A brand new id and tutorial growth: Speech and Listening to Sciences
By the late Nineteen Eighties, the speech division’s extra inventive and scientific items had diverged to the purpose of restructuring, with theatre and drama becoming a member of the College of Music and rhetoric and media programs migrating to what’s now the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication.
In 1987, the division was renamed Speech and Listening to Sciences in recognition of the self-discipline’s more and more complete method to the science of human communication.
That very same 12 months, WSU and Jap Washington College started a 35-year partnership to increase instructional and analysis programming in well being care fields in Spokane. Outgrowing Daggy Corridor in Pullman, the division started to consolidate its applications at WSU’s rising Spokane campus, coaching college students in a wide range of scientific settings within the surrounding metropolis.
Becoming a member of the School of Drugs: new period, new prospects
The latest decade has marked a shift for the division and opened new alternatives for scientific and group initiatives.
In 2015, Speech and Listening to Sciences grew to become the founding division of WSU’s newly created Elson S. Floyd School of Drugs. After an itinerant path by means of WSU’s administrative divisions, the division discovered its residence alongside cutting-edge medical training and analysis to coach speech-language pathologists and different professionals outfitted to serve in an more and more interprofessional well being care panorama.
“Our colleagues in drugs perceive us. We communicate the identical language,” Chermak mentioned. “Becoming a member of the School of Drugs allowed us to develop and collaborate extra successfully throughout clinically centered disciplines.”
The division now presents an array of educational applications that put together college students for impactful careers in scientific observe and analysis by means of community-based and on-campus scientific experiences. College and college students conduct analysis on communication issues throughout the lifespan, from autism and neurodevelopmental issues in infants to aging-related adjustments to speech and swallowing.
“As we have fun 100 years of excellence, we’re not simply wanting again — we’re wanting ahead to the challenges and alternatives that lie forward,” mentioned Affiliate Professor David Jenson, who took over as chair on July 7, 2025. “Our purpose is to organize the subsequent technology of clinicians and researchers whereas persevering with to evolve together with the wants of the communities we serve.”
