NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Actor and Singer - Broadway's Rent, the Band 's Visit, and Fiddler on the Roof
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- Co - Founder, Head of Research & Organizational Development
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- Program Assistant
- Assistant Director / Alumni Relations and Development
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- Artistic Director, American Musical Theatre Project ( AMTP )
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- Senior Technical Support Specialist
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- Director of Development
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate Director of Development / Alumni Relations and Development
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- Assistant
- Assistant Clinical Professor, Assistant Department Chair
Amy Sindelar is an assistant clinical professor and the assistant department chair in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She is a licensed speech language pathologist with extensive experience as a diagnostician and treating clinician working with pediatric patients. Her specific clinical background includes working with patients who have fluency disorders and language delays or disorders. In addition to her assignments within the department, Amy holds a PRN position as a pediatric clinician for Northwestern Medicine at Central DuPage Hospital.
Education
MS, Eastern Illinois University
BS, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
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- Associate Dean for Graduate Programs
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- Department of Radio / Television / Film
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- Actor and Emmy Award - Winning Writer - Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, a Black Lady Sketch Show, Drunk History, Bless This Mess, and Ted Lasso
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- Best - Selling Author, Writer, and Producer - When They See Us and Little Fires Everywhere
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- Audience Experience Manager
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- Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs
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- Producing Director, American Musical Theatre Project ( AMTP )
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- Communications Specialist
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- Manager of Production Services
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- Assistant Clinical Professor
I provide assessment and rehabilitation for adults and children of various disorders of the auditory system including hearing loss, tinnitus, noise exposure, and auditory processing disorders. I teach academic and clinical courses for students in our Doctor of Audiology program, and am active in Northwestern University's Hearing Conservation Program to protect staff's hearing.
Catherine Fabian's primary clinical interests lie in the functional neurology of individuals' peripheral and central auditory systems and in assessing and treating the impact of injury, illness, and noise exposure on hearing and auditory processing. She is experienced with assessing and treating auditory dysfunction in children, managing tinnitus, performing central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) evaluations, measuring and controlling noise exposure, and providing rehabilitation through auditory training and device fitting for children and adults.
Dr. Fabian has worked as a private practitioner, educational audiologist, and clinical research audiologist. Her work includes developing CAPD assessment and therapy programs and performing multidisciplinary research, assessment, and treatment of auditory and vestibular dysfunction following brain injury. She also directed Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Program for a large regional health system.
She strives to consolidate her professional expertise and passions into her teaching and practice to expand the reach of audiology and its specialties in order to increase early identification and management of hearing loss and other auditory disorders. Dr. Fabian is an instructor for Clinical Practice and Vestibular Evaluation and Management.
Education
AuD, Northwestern University
BA, Linguistics (Language and the Brain), University of California, San Diego
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- Assistant Director of Facilities and Operations
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- Author and Emmy - Nominated Actress - Diff'Rent Strokes, the Facts of Life, Endgame, and the Facts of My Life
Claus-Peter Richter is a professor in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. He also holds appointments in the Feinberg School of Medicine, as an associate professor in otolaryngology, and the McCormick School, as an associate professor in biomedical engineering. Richter's primary research interests are the development and improvement of cochlear implant electrodes and the micromechanics of the mammalian cochlea. He investigates the stimulation of auditory neurons with optical radiation to measure the impedances of cochlear structures and possible current paths for the electrically stimulated cochlea. He also examines new placements and designs of cochlear implant electrodes. Richter is a fellow of the Hugh Knowles Center for Clinical Basic Sciences in Hearing and its Disorders, and much of his research funding is provided by the National Institute of Health, the E.R. Capita Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
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- Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame Journalist
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- Director of Development
- Director of Development / Alumni Relations and Development
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- Senior Digital Media Specialist
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- Member of the Tony Award - Winning Lookingglass Theatre
E. Patrick Johnson is dean of the School of Communication and the Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University.
E. Patrick Johnson's work has greatly impacted African American studies, performance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. He is the author of several books, including Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003), Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South - An Oral History (2008), Black. Queer. Southern. Women. -An Oral History (2018), and Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to a number of edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays. Johnson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
You will get the foundational elements of your studies in the classroom but also the time, support, and resources to explore your chosen field and develop a creative and scholarly voice through practice-based opportunities. My goal as dean is to ensure that each of you is experiencing the breadth of our school but also the maximum of your potential. This is done by fostering new, and augmenting existing, partnerships.
But partnerships don't last if they're not built on a foundation of mutual respect, appreciation, and understanding. I want you to know that we're creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive home for our community where each voice is valued and given credence. I want you to know that you are landing in a supportive place where faculty and administration want you to succeed. I want you to find in the collaborative process that it's better to create than compete. I want you to be inspired to explore, to fall down, to get back up, and get back at it.
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- Program Assistant, Musical Theatre and AMTP
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- Associate
- Director of Northwestern Center for Audiology, Speech, Language and Learning Associate Clinical Professor Fellow, Knowles Hearing Center
- Director of NUCASLL
Diane Novak is a Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and serves as the Center for Audiology, Speech, Language, and Learning Director at Northwestern University. Diane is a certified audiologist with over 25 years of clinical experience. Dr. Novak's clinical work has focused on diagnosing and treating adults with hearing loss. She has special interests in the professional and clinical development of students, improving accessibility to hearing healthcare, and educating allied health professionals and consumers on the importance of prevention, identification, and treatment of hearing loss and balance issues. She is responsible for strategy, finance, marketing, and operations for all clinical services.
Education
AuD, A.T. Still University of Health Sciences
MS, Audiology, Gallaudet University
BA, Communication Science and Disorders, University of Toledo
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- Executive Director for the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, JoAnn G. and Peter F. Dolle Professor Emerita in Learning Disabilities
Doris Johnson is a pioneer in the study of learning disabilities. Along with her colleague Helmer R. Myklebust, she is the author of Learning Disabilities: Educational Principles and Practice, a landmark book that became one of the foundational texts for understanding otherwise healthy children who have difficulty processing certain information. Her research focuses on the importance of symbols in the learning process and how problems affect an individual's ability to understand and use various types of information. For nineteen years, Johnson was the director of Northwestern's Learning Disabilities Program. She has served as the executive director for the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities and remains active in the Learning Disabilities Association of America. Still an engaged and committed teacher, Johnson sits on the advisory board of the Association of Educational Therapists and is currently working on an early literacy project with several graduate students for the Chicago Public Schools.
Education
PhD Education, Northwestern University
MS Speech and Language Pathology, Northwestern University
BS Speech Therapy, Augustana College
Northwestern University
School of Communication
Dr. Bharath Chandrasekaran was a Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of Pittsburgh. He earned his Ph.D. in Integrative Neuroscience from Purdue University in 2008 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University before joining the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin in 2010. Beginning Fall 2023, Dr. Chandrasekaran is honored to take on a new role as the Ralph and Jean Sundin Endowed Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders and Chair of the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Dr. Chandrasekaran applies a systems neuroscience approach to investigate the computations, maturational constraints, and plasticity underlying auditory signals like speech and music. Over the past two decades, his lab has employed cutting-edge behavioral, multimodal neuroimaging and modeling-based approaches to gain computational, algorithmic, and implementation-level understanding of how sounds are represented and mapped to behaviorally-relevant constructs in the human brain. His research is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as communication sciences and disorders, neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, engineering, and otolaryngology. Dr. Chandrasekaran's interdisciplinary program of research is currently supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and PNC Charitable Foundation.
In his administrative role (2018-22) as the Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders, Dr. Chandrasekaran has overseen a substantial expansion in research operations and collaborations. The department has received over 20 federally funded awards in 2023, compared to 5 in 2018, and over 85% of research faculty now receive some form of federal research support compared to just 20% in 2018. Dr. Chandrasekaran has spearheaded the establishment of multiple investigator-led shared lab initiatives, breaking disciplinary silos in favor of collaborative, interdisciplinary sciences.
Dr. Chandrasekaran has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to the field of communication sciences and disorders, having been awarded several prestigious awards, including the University of Texas System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014, the Psychonomics Early Career Award in 2016, the Society for Neurobiology of Language Early Career Award in 2018, and the Fellowship of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association in 2022. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research from 2018 to 2021 and currently serves as the Chair of the Language and Communication Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.
Education
PhD, Integrative Neuroscience, Purdue University
Northwestern University
School of Communication
Job Titles:
- Assistant Clinical Professor
Dr. Liz T. Meyer is an Assistant Clinical Professor the Northwestern University Center for Audiology and Speech Language Learning who diagnoses and treats communication impairments from hearing loss. She specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of tinnitus. Her goal is to help others improve their lives through better communication. She created a virtual seminar series for those interested in learning more about hearing treatment, advocate for someone with hearing loss and/or tinnitus and prevent noise induced hearing loss. She is currently on a longitudinal research project at Northwestern (P-Chat) researching alternative delivery models for the treatment of hearing loss.
Dr. Liz T. Meyer's clinical interests are in diagnosing and treating adults with hearing impairment. She enjoys working with patients and helping them meet their communication goals. Dr. Meyer is active in community outreach and patient advocacy.
Education
AuD, Northern Illinois University
BA, The University of Minnesota
Job Titles:
- Emmy Nominated Producer and Director - Fox 's Rent
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- Department of Communication Studies
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- Actor - Matrix Series, the Blacklist, the Five Heartbeats, Dollhouse, and Billions
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- Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Advising Clinical Assistant Professor / Undergraduate Academic Advisor for Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Director of Undergraduate Programs and Advising With the School
- Undergraduate Academic Advisor for
Jeanette Ortiz is the Director of Undergraduate Programs and Advising with the School of Communication and the academic advisor for undergraduate students in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). She also advises students in the Children and Communication module and in the Communicating Brain module, and teaches CSD 110 Introduction to Hearing and Speech Acoustics. In addition to supporting students in achieving their educational and professional goals, Jeanette assists in implementing the School's undergraduate programs and initiatives. Prior to her director role, Jeanette served as the assistant chair of the CSD Department.
After completing her bachelor's degree with a major in Japanese language, Jeanette worked at Panasonic Corporation's headquarters in Japan as an editor of internal communications media. To pursue her interests in language, music, and the brain, she returned to the Chicago area, and earned both of her graduate degrees from Northwestern University. Her master's thesis in linguistics focused on the effects of stress and clear speech on consonant acoustics, and her doctoral dissertation in the area of audiology and hearing sciences investigated perceptual learning on basic auditory tasks. Outside of academics, Jeanette's interests include music, travel, and dance, and she is a former instructor and company member of Latin Street Music and Dancing.
Education
PhD, Audiology and Hearing Sciences, Northwestern University
MA, Linguistics, Northwestern University
BS, Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University
Researcher, fellow, and past president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association - revolutionized the treatment of swallowing disorders (dysphagia)
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- As CEO and Chair of Universal Music Publishing Group - First and Only Woman to Lead a Major Music Company
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- Executive Producer, Writer, and Director - Chicago Fire and the Pages
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- Associate Professor Fellow, Hugh Knowles Center
Jonathan Siegel is a neurobiologist with a long-standing interest in auditory physiology. He is an associate professor in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, as well as an associate professor of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Siegel's primary research interests are otoacoustic emissions and hair cell physiology. He is the principal investigator in the Otoacoustic Emissions Laboratory, and he is also a collaborator in the School of Communication's Auditory Research Lab. Siegel has written and lectured widely on cochlear physiology and ultrastructure. He is a reviewer for a number of scientific journals, including Audiology and Neurotology, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and the Journal of Neuroscience. The courses he teaches include Advanced Neurobiology and Physiology, Neurobiology and Communication, and Otoacoustic Emissions: Theory and Practice.
Education
PhD Physiology and Biophysics, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
BS Physics, University of Arkansas
Job Titles:
- President, and CEO of the California Wellness Foundation ( Cal Wellness )
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- Cinematography Specialist
Kantara is the Milwaukee Art Museum's curator of community dialogue, a newly created position to ensure that community engagement is at the center of adult programming.
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- Assistant Clinical Professor
Karen Kinderman's primary clinical interests lie in the areas of acquired neurogenic disorders of language and cognitive communication, motor speech disorders, and dysphagia. She is a certified SPEAK OUT! provider and LOUD Crowd facilitator for people with Parkinson's Disease. In addition, she works on speech intelligibility with adults from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Education
MA, Speech-Language Pathology, Northwestern University
BA, Sociology, Sonoma State University
Northwestern University
School of Communication
Job Titles:
- Emmy Nominated Producer and Director - Fox 's Rent
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- Director of Communications
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- Senior Program Coordinator
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- Professor
- Professor Emerita
Laura Ann Wilber is a professor emerita of audiology and hearing sciences in the department of communication sciences and disorders. One of her primary research interests is noise, and she is currently working with audiology students studying noise and its effects to help them complete their capstone projects. An expert in clinical audiology, Wilber has worked to perfect the equipment used to assess hearing and amplification devices. She has been active in the creation of standards for these devices and for audiometric testing procedures. For over twenty years she has served as a United States representative for the International Standards Organization.
Wilber has published in various professional journals, including the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. With Alan Feldman she published Acoustic Impedance and Admittance: The Measurement of Middle Ear Function. She is also the author of several chapters dealing with audiologic testing and calibration of equipment. Wilber has served as president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, and the American Auditory Society. She was also a founding member of the American Academy of Audiology. She is certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in both speech-language pathology and audiology. Wilber is a licensed audiologist and hearing-aid dispenser. She has also been actively engaged in the problem of noise and its effects on people. She served on the Environmental Control Board in New York City as the "noise expert," and was a member of a NIH consensus panel that addressed this issue.
Education
PhD Audiology, Northwestern University
MA Deaf Education, Gallaudet University
BS Speech Correction, University of Southern Mississippi
Northwestern University
School of Communication
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Artistic Director of Story Pirates Podcast and Show
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- Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Advising
Luis Antonio Perez and his Colorado Public Radio music appreciation Music Blocks won best podcast for children at the 2022 Podcast Academy Ambie Awards and was also nominated in the best knowledge category. Perez is also a producer on Back from Broken, which was a 2021 nominee for best inter- view podcast.
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- Artistic Director, Imagine U
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- Diversity and Inclusion Strategist and Chief Diversity Officer at Wintrust Financial
- Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Wintrust
Melissa Donaldson (GC17), senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Wintrust
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- Associate Dean for Research
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- Director of Finance and Budgeting
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- Marketing and Development Manager
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- Web Applications / Software Developer
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- Associate Dean for Finance & Administration
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- Associate Dean
- Chief of Staff
Selina wrote the comedy POTUS, which opened on Broadway in April 2022. Directed by Susan Stroman and starring Vanessa Williams, Rachel Dratch, and Lea Delaria, the play earned three Tony Award nominations. Fillinger is among the youngest playwrights to have a show on Broadway and a past Agnes Nixon Playwriting Festival winner. She currently writes for the third season of Apple TV's The Morning Show and is developing a feature for Chernin/Netflix.
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- Actor, Comedian, and Emmy - Winning Writer - SNL and NBC 's Late Night With Seth Meyers
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- Assistant Dean for Research
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- CEO
- Chairman
- President
- Directors
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- Technical Support Specialist
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- Assistant Dean and Executive Artistic Director
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- Actor - Annie Hall, the Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Amityville 3 - D, and Law & Order
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- Director of Special Events
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- Owner and Chairman of the Stanley Cup - Winning Chicago Blackhawks Hockey Team and Wirtz Corporation President
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- Founder and Producer - Gulfstream Pictures
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- Writer, Director, Actor, Grammy Award - Winning Producer - Scrubs and Garden State
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- Writer, Comedian, and Series Creator - Baited With Ziwe