 Anny Castilla-Earls, Ph.D. |
By Roger Coda
Dr. Anny Castilla-Earls, assistant professor of Communication Disorders and Sciences, will become the first SUNY Fredonia faculty member to participate in the Clinical Practice Research Institute, an annual intensive grant-writing workshop sponsored by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.
This competitive ASHA program connects promising young faculty members with experienced clinical research mentors to increase their chances of securing federal funding through the Department of Education, National Institutes of Health or other agencies. Research is focused on the acquisition of knowledge that will prevent, identify, assess and treat communication and related disorders.
“This is a highly selective program and it is an honor to be selected to participate,” said Dr. Kevin Kearns, SUNY Fredonia associate vice president for Graduate Studies & Research. Castilla-Earls will be one of eight participants in this year’s event.
Comprised of three phases spanning about one year, the institute opens with a three-day conference at the ASHA national office during March that brings together participants, institute faculty and guest speakers to focus on principles, methods and funding mechanisms that support clinical practical research.
Participants are assigned a mentor and work closely with him/her remotely during the second phase and complete sections of a grant application.
Institute activities culminate with a two-day gathering of all participants to receive and generate more input on their applications, discuss unresolved issues with fellow participants and faculty and finalize their own applications.
Future funding that could be awarded to Castilla-Earls would support research into the language characteristics of bilingual English-Spanish children. An opportunity to acquire invaluable research experience would be gained by students enrolled in SUNY Fredonia’s Communication Disorders and Sciences program. Greater interdisciplinary collaborations between Castilla-Earls and other campus faculty and expanded associations between SUNY Fredonia and other schools in the region would also be achieved.
Castilla-Earls, who joined SUNY Fredonia in 2009, will be the lone SUNY system faculty member at the institute, now in its fourth year. Fellow participants represent Purdue, Ohio State, San Francisco State and University of Iowa, among other universities. Institute faculty have been drawn from Vanderbilt University, Ohio State, Boston University, University of Kansas and Arizona State University.
