Recently, two School of Communication Science and Disorders faculty members– Dr. Kelly and Christopher Constantino– received the Committee on Faculty Research Support Summer Award from the Florida State Council on Research and Creativity. This award provides faculty with funding for summer salary or research related expenses to assist with research and creative endeavors.

SCSD associate professor and graduate program coordinator Dr. Kelly Farquharson was awarded $20,000 for her project “PhonoPro: Using Implementation Science for Professional Development related to Phonological Treatment Approaches.” Assistant professor Christopher Constantino was also awarded $20,000 for his project “A Comprehensive Fluency Therapy.”

Constantino’s project will study how to make the experience of stuttering more enjoyable for the speaker as it can often make speech extremely effortful. He shared that he hopes the award and the research it supports will “improve treatment outcomes for people who stutter by developing therapy protocols that privilege how speech feels to the speaker rather than how it sounds to the listener.”

The project is currently in the preliminary data collection stage. Depending on the results of this, Constantino and his coworker on the project Dr. Naomi Eichorn from the University of Memphis plan to scale up the study and run randomized controlled group designs.