Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (LSHSS) is pleased to announce the selection of Karla N. Washington, PhD, CCC-SLP, S-LP(C), BCS-CL as editor-in-chief of the journal. Dr. Washington will begin her term on January 1, 2025, succeeding Kelly Farquharson Ph.D., CCC-SLP. Karla N. Washington is an associate professor in the department of speech-language pathology at the University of Toronto, where she directs the Paediatric Language, Learning, & Speech (PedLLS) Outcomes Lab. She is a Fellow of the Association and is a Canada Research Chair in Monolingual and Multilingual Paediatric Speech-Language Pathology (Tier 2, Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

Dr. Washington’s Background

Dr. Washington earned her master’s degree in speech-language pathology at the University of Western Ontario in 2003, and she later earned her PhD from the same university in 2007. She served as an editorial board member for LSHSS from 2017–2020, and has been an editor for the publication since 2021. She has also provided reviews for the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (AJSLP) and the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR).

Dr. Washington has published 15 articles between AJSLP, JSLHR, and LSHSS, and her work has more than 1,000 citations. An SLP licensed in Canada, Jamaica, and the United States; her research interests include: 1) measurement science in the pediatric arena; and 2) child language development and disorders in the context of child’s environment in children who are monolingual speakers of the ambient language and in those who are multilingual speakers. Her research methodologies include those that are transcription-based, the use of acoustic duration, and application of neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and diffusion imaging to characterize development and disorder across different linguistic contexts, including those that are understudied.

About LSHSS

LSHSS publishes peer-reviewed research and other scholarly articles on practice of audiology and speech-language pathology in the schools, focusing on children and adolescents. You can read more than 50 years of articles in LSHSS’s archive or check out the latest issue.

Karla N. Washington can be reached at karla.washington@utoronto.ca. She welcomes your input and suggestions on how LSHSS can best serve the practice of audiology and speech-language pathology in the schools—and the discipline of communication sciences and disorders at large.