By Will Bower 

The 2024-25 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) distinguished alumni lecture will be delivered by Ida J. Stockman, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, on April 11. Stockman is professor emerita of communication sciences and disorders at Michigan State University (MSU), where she began her teaching career in 1983.  

Stockman arrived in Iowa City from Mississippi in 1962 and graduated with an M.A. in speech pathology and audiology in 1965. She has since forged a prolific career in the field of communication sciences and disorders. Her visit next month will be her first time in Iowa City since graduating. 

Learn more about Stockman’s life and career in this Q&A. 

What was the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders like when you graduated in 1965? 

I studied at the University of Iowa when there was no central building for the department’s activities. I graduated before the Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center was built. My classes were held in a building across the Iowa River from where I worked as a student assistant at the cinefluoroscopic lab at the hospital. Some activities were housed in large, older homes that had been adapted for use as department offices and as clinical practicum sites.   

My professors were well-known researchers in the field. They included the late Wendell Johnson, after whom the speech and hearing center is currently named, and the late Hughlett Morris, James Hardy, Evan Jordon, Kenneth Moll, and Dean Williams. They also included David Lily and Arnold Smalls. At that time, the department was especially known for its pioneering work with the cleft lip and palate population. It collaborated with medical doctors and other professionals in a team approach to clinical assessment and intervention for this clinical population. 

How did your time at Iowa affect the way you approached the world/your career? 

My time at Iowa certainly influenced, if not determined, my professional path in the field after graduation. In fact, it influenced my motivation to seek a doctoral degree. 

At Iowa, I found good grounding in the field. I absolutely loved my courses and felt that a whole new world of knowledge was opened to me.  

I was motivated to do a research thesis, although it was not required to graduate. The late professor Hughlett Morris was my thesis adviser. During this process, I began learning about how to do data-driven empirical research – an experience that was well served by later educational and professional work.   

Most importantly, Iowa is where I discovered how much I love the field of speech-language pathology. It combined my search for an occupation that satisfied a need to do good in the world –an idea instilled by my parents– and my desire to seek a new occupation that was outside the limits set for me by my childhood experiences.   

Can you describe a few of your proudest accomplishments from your career? 

There have been multiple high points in my career given what is now a long history in the field. During my talk on April 11, I plan to identify how some of my work contributed to our knowledge about typical language differences and the atypical language and nonlanguage behaviors associated with autism-spectrum disorders.  

Here, just one experience is mentioned as a professional accomplishment – my oral presentation as an invited speaker to an international conference on brain injury and rehabilitation in Germany (1994). Although this speech on “semantic mapping” is just a single entry on my curriculum vitae, it involved untold hours of work that stretched the limits of my speaking ability and exposed my cultural short-sightedness as well. 

I had learned to speak some German while working with a clinical research team in Switzerland for years, but I did not view my skills as sufficient to deliver a speech in German at a conference. I had accepted the speaking invitation with my own assumption that English would be the language spoken. But when I received the program just weeks before the event, I was horrified to discover that it was all in German. I immediately contacted the program committee to inquire about a possible misunderstanding. I was met with the response “…but we were told that you could deliver the speech in German.” I chastised myself for my arrogance in assuming that the organizers of a conference held in a non-English-speaking country would prefer English to their own native tongue. So, I decided to keep my promise to speak at the conference and to do so in German, despite the challenges it posed. Armed with my knowledge of phonetic transcription and the help of one of my native German-speaking students, I was able to deliver my speech in German - one of the greatest challenges and rewards of my professional career.  

Nevertheless, when invited to speak on two later occasions for similar professional groups - one in Germany and one in Switzerland, I first inquired about what language I was expected to use for my speech.   

Anything else you’d like to add? 

My experience in Iowa City expanded my professional preparedness. It also contributed a lot to my personal development. I arrived in Iowa City when I was 19 years old. I had just finished college and was eager to take on a new experience of living outside of Mississippi where I had been born and lived until then. Although I had traveled outside the South to visit relatives, I had not lived for an extensive time anywhere else before Iowa City. It opened a whole new world to me because I grew up in the racially segregated, Jim Crow South where there was very limited contact with people outside of my racial group. Therefore, there was a steep personal learning curve for me when coming to Iowa City in 1962. It is a place where I came of age and discovered a world that was not open to me in my childhood. So, I have a warm place in my heart for Iowa City.

Furthermore, I consider my travel experiences to be among the most rewarding and valuable aspects of my life. I have been fortunate to travel to all 50 states and to have lived in seven of them in different regions of the country. I have also traveled to other countries in most regions of the world. I cannot say enough about the value of such experiences to my life and highly recommend this avenue for expanding anyone’s view of the world and one’s place in it.