I am an
Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at Governors
State University. I am also a certified
Speech-Language Pathologist with more than 14 years of clinical experience in
pediatric communication disorders.
I
enjoy teaching undergraduate and graduate students and use a variety of pedagogical
approaches, including engaged class discussion, collaborative group work, interactive
technologies, applied projects and critical analysis of case studies to facilitate
students’ mastery of core knowledge and skills required for clinical practice
in speech-language pathology.I believe
in excellence in scholarship and am committed to helping students develop into
their best academic and professional selves as they pursue study in communication
disorders.
I currently teach Anatomy
& Physiology of Speech and Hearing, Language Development: Later Stages, and
Sociolinguistics in the undergraduate program and Language and Literacy
Disorders: Later Stages, and Advanced Speech Sound Disorders in the graduate
program. In addition to teaching, I supervise
graduate students in prevention, evaluation and treatment experiences with
early childhood and school-age clients in community-based settings.
My research interests are deeply informed by my experiences as a
school-based speech-language pathologist.Through my work on multidisciplinary teams, I learned that diagnosis of
more subjective disabilities such as language and learning disabilities was
affected by many factors.Poor
assessment practices, inadequate instruction, knowledge and beliefs about child
development, linguistic diversity, availability of school resources and student
behavior played as vital a role as interpretation of objective evaluation data
in school-based diagnosis of disability.These experiences helped me to begin the process of asking and answering
questions about language, culture, and disability.
My current research focuses on three areas of
inquiry: (1) development of linguistic profiles of African-American youth, (2)
the identification of evidence-based language interventions for school-age
children and adolescents with language-learning disabilities, and (3)
collaborative models for service delivery in clinical and educational settings.My ultimate goal is to provide rich,
linguistic information that that can be used to develop evidence-based
assessment methods and intervention programs for older
school-age children and children from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds.
The most
exciting part of my position at GSU is being afforded the opportunity to
integrate my research interests and clinical work into teaching and mentoring experiences
that help students develop into deep thinkers prepared to solve the complex
communication needs of the individuals who speech-language pathologist
serve.
In my time at GSU, I’ve been able
to develop community partnerships that have provided students with clinical
experiences directly connected to coursework.The GSU community encourages innovative and collaborative teaching and
learning practices that serve the wider community.I look forward to developing research and
clinical experiences that help students develop into competent and confident
professionals focused on improving the lives of their future patients, clients
and students through excellent clinical practice.
Publications
Koonce, N.M. (in press). When it comes
to explaining: A preliminary investigation of the expository language skills of
African American school age children. Topics
in Language Disorders.
Scott, C.M., & Koonce, N.M. (2013). Syntactic
contributions to literacy learning. In C.A. Stone, E. Silliman, & G.
Wallach (Eds.), Handbook of language and
literacy: Development and disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
Koonce, N.M., & Jones, V. On the outside looking in:
The underrepresentation of African American students with learning disabilities
in special education reading research. Manuscript in preparation.
Koonce, N.M. Structural elements in the
narratives of African American school-age children. Manuscript in preparation.
Link to Dr. Koonce's Full CV: