Dr. Brenda Louw, Chair of the Department Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology at
East Tennessee State University, is stepping down as chair after 11 years in that
position on July 31, 2020 to focus on her research and enjoy her teaching in the Speech-Language
Pathology master’s program and in various personnel preparation grants.
Louw joined ETSU from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where she was the Chair of the Department of Communication Pathology. She and her husband Jack, moved to Johnson City in 2009. They became U.S. citizens in 2016.
Under Louw’s leadership, the department has grown on multiple levels. The number of students in the Audiology Clinical Doctorate and Master in Speech-Language Pathology program have increased significantly. An undergraduate minor in American Sign Language (ASL), which has generated much interest and has the support of the local deaf community, was added in 2019.
The ETSU Speech and Language Clinic also expanded in the last decade under Louw’s leadership to better serve community needs and reflect faculty expertise. Examples include the Positive Eating program, the Voice Clinic, the Concussion Management Program, the Gary Shealy ALS Clinic and the Auditory Verbal Intervention Clinic. The department’s clinic at the Nave Center in Elizabethton was renamed the Center for Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology in 2018 with the opening of the new state-of the art Audiology clinic.
Louw’s areas of expertise are cleft lip and palate, pediatric HIV/AIDS and culturally responsive practice, and she has a number of other research interests. She has nearly 90 peer reviewed publications globally, and over 120 professional conference presentations which have been delivered at conferences on five continents. Since joining ETSU, she was awarded various research grants including the Carnegie Foundation Africa Diaspora Fellowship twice with a South African colleague, which enabled to her to collaborate with researchers in South Africa and led to two publications, two U.S. national convention presentations and a lecture series in South Africa. Her expertise is acknowledged nationally and abroad, and she has received invitations to present at conferences and act as external examiner for doctoral dissertations in Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
She is the Chair of the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences (CCRHS) Internationalization Committee, which encourages international collaboration through study abroad opportunities, research collaboration and adding international components to on-campus courses.
Louw was the first recipient of the ETSU School of Graduate Studies Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award in 2014 and received the CCRHS Distinguished Faculty Award for teaching in 2018. Student research projects mentored by her have been presented at the national American Speech, Language Hearing Association (ASHA) Annual Conventions and the Appalachian Student Research Forum annually, where they have won awards, as well.
“I love working with, teaching and learning from my students,” Louw said. “I postponed stepping down as chair until the department had undergone its second accreditation during my leadership in October 2019, which was successful. The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology programs received the news in March that they are now accredited until 2028.
“I am excited about the new phase in my career and am happy to be staying on at ETSU.”