The SALSA Team
SALSA Lab members include a number of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students with supervised research and/or volunteer commitments to SALSA projects for one or more semesters. Activities and projects conducted by members of the SALSA Lab are supervised by Dr. Shannon Hall-Mills, Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Science & Disorders at FSU. SALSA lab projects include faculty-directed and student-directed research and service projects.
Dr. Shannon Hall- Mills, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Assistant ProfessorDr. Hall-Mills is the Director of the SALSA Lab in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University. She began her career as a school-based SLP, and has worked at the school, school district, and state level of public education to support special education programs and services for students with disabilities. Dr. Hall-Mills' research encompasses two primary lines of inquiry: 1) The assessment, identification, and treatment of written language difficulties in school-age children and adolescents, including within culturally and linguistically diverse student populations; and 2) School-based practice issues in speech-language pathology, including the implementation of evidence-based practices and the impact of educational policies for students with disabilities.
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Leesa Marante, M.S., CCC-SLPDoctoral Student Leesa Marante is in her third year of doctorate studying under the directive of Dr. Shannon Hall-Mills. She is a practicing speech language pathologist in a private practice that serves individuals aged 3 to 18 from the Tallahassee community. Her research interests are two-fold: vocabulary development of students with language impairment or learning disabilities and professional development for improved language therapy for school-based SLPs. She has begun investigating questions that will establish the characteristics of a successful adolescent student with language impairment, including their vocabulary repertoire, their learning environment, and their metacognitive abilities to self-monitor their academic success.
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Sara Collins, B.S.
Master-Doctoral Combined StudentSara Collins, B.S., is a dual M.S./PhD student in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University. She is currently a research fellow for the personnel preparation grant: Improving Language and Literacy Outcomes in High-Need Populations. Additionally, Sara is completing a Master’s Thesis with Dr. Shannon Hall-Mills that evaluates elements of complex syntax between individuals with and without language impairment. She intends to defend her thesis in the summer of 2020. Her research interests include evaluating vocabulary bench-marking tools for school-age children, investigating reading outcomes of school-age children with and without language impairments, school-based advocacy for individuals with autism-spectrum disorder, and syntactic and reading development of individuals who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing.
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Ann Kreidler2nd Year Graduate Student
Ann Kreidler is a second-year speech-language pathology Master’s student at FSU. She is working with Dr. Hall-Mills on a project that seeks to compare the written syntactic complexity of fifth grade students with and without language impairment. In the future, Ann hopes to work with both children and adults as a speech-language pathologist.
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Lab Alumni
Dr. Dana Brown, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Dana Brown received her B.S. (2012) and M.S. (2014) degrees from Alabama A&M University and her Ph.D. (2019) from FSU. Dr. Brown was a fellow on the Bilingual Oral Language and Literacy Development Doctoral training grant (PIs: Wood, Hall-Mills). Dr. Brown recently completed her dissertation titled: "Teachers' and Speech-Language Pathologists' Perceptions and Responses to African American English Use Within Academic Settings". Dr. Brown's research interests include language disorders in children, language and literacy development of minority children including those who speak African American English, and the influences of parental involvement and socioeconomic status in child development.
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May Derry,M.S., CF-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist-Clinical Fellow
May Derry graduated in August 2019. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay area and works at a private practice. She is interested in adolescent and preschool language, literacy, and social skills development. Her studies thus far have focused on adolescent language and literacy. The first study, entitled Eliciting expository language complexity from adolescents: Peer-mediated vs. instructor-student dyad models, investigated the effects of a peer-mediated model of language and literacy instruction for adolescents. The second study, entitled Developing a conceptual framework for adolescent vocabulary intervention: A scoping review, explored the current literature of adolescent vocabulary intervention and discussed the creation of a united conceptual framework as a tool for interventionists. May and her husband serve with youth in their neighborhood to build community through the junior youth spiritual empowerment program (JYSEP). One goal of the program is to aid middle schoolers to develop their powers of expression. Work with the JYSEP largely contributed to May's pursuing speech-language pathology and love of working with adolescents.
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