Long Island University Professor Richard W. Matthes
Elected Fellow of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Brooklyn, N.Y. — Richard W. Matthes, an expert on hearing loss at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, has been named a 2004 Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

The professional, scientific, and credentialing association for over 110,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists cited Matthes for his "great dedication and commitment to the discipline of human communication sciences and disorders."

"This is a great honor," said the East Windsor, N.J. resident, who is an associate professor in the Brooklyn Campus’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. He specializes in the management of hearing loss and the relationship between auditory processing ability and academic performance.

Matthes joined Long Island University in 1996 after a 25-year tenure with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs as a clinical audiologist, including 20 years as chief of Audiology and Speech Pathology Service at different V.A. medical centers. Earlier, he was an English teacher in New Jersey high schools and attributes his present career to two of his students who stuttered.

"I became interested in speech and then in hearing because the two are related," he says. "Without communication, very little in life matters. That is my motivation for what I do." He adds: "It’s rewarding to teach at a university that has multicultural multilingual students who are interested in acquiring the skills necessary to help others communicate well."

Matthes has served on many national committees of ASHA and the V.A. in order to introduce new clinical standards for the practice of speech-language pathology and audiology. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University, his master’s at Montclair University and his doctorate at Columbia University.

Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus opened in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. More than 30,000 students currently are enrolled at the University’s three residential and three regional compuses, including more than 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus.