Barbara W. Hodson PhD

is honored with a Brick from John J. Kisner, Jr. and Heather D. Hodson-Kisner.

I can still remember finding a box deep in storage at the age of 7. It was filled with awards, newspapers articles, pictures, and congratulatory notes. She was Valedictorian in high school, year book editor and in the May queen court in college, but all of this was put away to make room for the amazing things she was about to achieve.

Barbara Williams Hodson, is the author of English and Spanish phonological assessment instruments and the developer of computer software for phonological analysis. In addition, she is co-author of "Targeting Intelligible Speech," co-editor of "Perspectives in Applied Phonology," and the editor of a "Topics in Language Disorders" theme issue, From Phonology to Metaphonology.

Prior to joining the faculty at Wichita State University where she is a Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, she taught at San Diego State University and at the University of Illinois, the institution where she received her doctorate. She was named an Erskine Fellow in 1998 and was a visiting professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, during May and June. She is a Fellow of the California and American Speech-Language Hearing Associations and was the recipient of the state Clinical Achievement Award for California in 1987 and for Kansas in 1992. Her primary professional goals have involved developing more effective and more efficient evaluation and remediation procedures for highly unintelligible children.

Many people have been touched by my mother, but I am definitely the luckiest. I have been motivated and impressed by her achievements. I did grow up believing that everyone had extra siblings called doctoral students constantly at their houses. At all of my sporting events, everyone could always tell which mother was mine because there she was with an open briefcase, working the whole time. Nonetheless, she was still able to recap the entire game with me afterwards. Although I have had to share my mother with many people, she has always been there when I needed her.

September 14, 1998