What started as a doctoral dissertation nearly a decade ago has now evolved into a federally funded research project to bridge the gap in bilingual speech-language pathology and vocabulary development for young children.

Texas Christian University Associate Professor Jean Rivera Perez and Professor Emily Lund are recipients of a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health – National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH/NIDCD) totaling a projected $2.72 million.

Through this grant and project, the smart device application – originally developed by Rivera Perez and then backed with Lund’s research –  will be in classrooms across the Fort Worth community for students in preschool through first grade, utilizing computer-assisted vocabulary instruction (CABVI).

“One of the parts of a communication disorder is also often vocabulary involved; children have trouble learning the words that they need in an academic setting to be able to function in the classroom,” Lund said. “So, typically, that’s where speech-language pathologists come in, and there are myriad evidence-based strategies that help children with communication disorders learn vocabulary.”

Lund said their project is a solution to multiple problems: helping bilingual children where English isn’t their first language with vocabulary and giving monolingual speech-language pathologists a piece of technology to assist in that endeavor.

“This project may go beyond that of just encouragement, helping the child with certain words in Spanish,” Rivera Perez said. “We can maybe help clinicians provide a better, solid amount of intervention in Spanish that will help these children improve with time.”

Landmark Achievement
Reuben Burch, TCU’s vice provost for research, calls this NIH research project grant (R01) a “landmark achievement” for the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences and for TCU.

“The NIH R01 is one of the most competitive and prestigious research grants in the country, and this marks the first R01 awarded directly to Harris faculty researchers. Just as importantly, it reflects the growing culture of ambitious, externally competitive research that our faculty are continuing to build across TCU.

“What makes this moment especially exciting is that Dr. Jean Rivera Perez earned this award as a first-time principal investigator. That speaks directly to the momentum we are seeing across the university as faculty answer the call to pursue research at the highest levels. With support from Chancellor Daniel Pullin, the leadership of Provost Floyd Wormley and the dedication of our researchers, TCU is demonstrating that we are ready to compete nationally for transformative research funding.”

Research that Improves Lives
Brad Cannell, associate dean for research for TCU’s Harris College, said this research and grant award are a perfect example of the diversity of research in health-related disciplines happening in Harris College.

“We do research because we’re curious about things that are important or we think that this research will improve people’s lives,” Cannell said. “There are some passionate, talented, dedicated faculty who are doing great work in Harris, including Dr. Lund and Dr. Rivera Perez out of the Davies School of Communication Sciences & Disorders. And one form of recognition of the quality of that work is to be awarded a grant, especially a large grant, from the NIH.”

Cannell emphasized that research is moving in a positive direction not only in Harris College, but across TCU.

“We’re also starting to see an increase in collaborations across departments and even across colleges, and I think that as we continue to build a culture of collaboration and interdisciplinary partnership, we’re going to see more and more of these really large, groundbreaking types of research studies,” Cannell said.

-Taylor Helmes