Jeannene Ward-Lonergan
Jeannene M. Ward-Lonergan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, BCS-CL, is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Health Sciences (SHS) at the University of the Pacific (Pacific). She previously served as the Director of Undergraduate Experience for the SHS and as Professor and Chair of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology at Pacific. Currently, she is Chair of the American Board of Child Language and Language Disorders (ABCLLD) and a Co-Founder of the Language-Literacy Center at Pacific. Dr. Ward-Lonergan has served as a member of the California Speech-Language-Hearing Association (CSHA) Foundation Board, the Ambassador for CSHA to the Decoding Dyslexia California organization, and as the CSHA Representative for the California Department of Education’s (CDE) Dyslexia Guidelines Work Group. Dr. Ward-Lonergan has also served as a CSHA Literacy Task Force member and is the first author of their position paper/resource guide. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses, published research articles and book chapters, and presented numerous workshops in the areas of language disorders, expository discourse, dyslexia, language-learning disabilities, and supporting literacy through written language intervention in school-age children and adolescents.
BS in Special Education/Child Study, Saint Joseph College, 1984
MS in Speech-Language Pathology, Boston University, 1989
PhD in Communication Science: Speech, Language and Hearing, University of Connecticut, 1995
Teaching Philosophy: “As a professor, my primary goal is to continually strive for excellence in teaching by attempting to create a stimulating learning environment in the classroom in a variety of ways including encouragement of student discussions, the inclusion of clinical case studies and “hands-on” learning projects that require students to apply the knowledge that they have acquired, and facilitation of the use of their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. It is my belief that these types of learning experiences are essential to preparing students for successful careers as speech-language pathologists.”
Dr. Ward-Lonergan has published research articles, book chapters and presented numerous seminars and workshops in the areas of expository discourse (informational language) comprehension and production and supporting literacy through written language intervention in school-age children and adolescents. She has taught courses in language disorders, assessment procedures, autism spectrum disorders, multicultural populations and research methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, she provides clinical supervision to students providing assessment and intervention services to youth with spoken and written language disorders.
Research Interests:
- Language Disorders in children, adolescents, and adults
- Language-learning disabilities in children, adolescents, and adults
- Language and literacy development
- Multicultural assessment and intervention issues
