Victoria S. Henbest, Ph.D., is an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist and assistant professor in the Speech Pathology and Audiology Department at the University of South Alabama where she teaches undergraduate introductory courses on language and speech disorders as well as graduate-level school-age language and literacy and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) courses. Prior to earning her doctoral degree, Dr. Henbest worked for 5 years as a full-time clinician in a public-school early childhood setting with preschool-age children with speech and language needs, including children on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disabilities, and medically complex children. Dr. Henbest's primary research interests include word-level reading and spelling and the relation between linguistic awareness skills, particularly morphological awareness, and literacy development. She has published and presented on these topics at the state, national, and international levels. Dr. Henbest is co-author of a textbook on child language disorders entitled Language Disorders in Children: Fundamental Concepts of Assessment and Intervention, Third Edition. Kenn Apel, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Formerly, he was Chair of that department. Dr. Apel has more than 35 years of experience conducting research in the areas of spoken and written language. His recent research focus has been on the linguistic factors that contribute to the development of reading and spelling, including morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Before retiring, he was the principal investigator of a three-year, $1.4M IES-sponsored grant (MATRS: Morphological Assessment for Reading and Spelling) to develop a morphological awareness assessment measure for students in 1st through 6th grades. Dr. Apel is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He also received the Honors of that Association. Yaacov Petscher, Ph.D., is Associate Director at the Florida Center for Reading Research, Tallahassee, and Deputy Director of the National Center on Improving Literacy. Dr. Petscher's research interests include the study of cross-sectional and longitudinal individual differences in literacy, psychometrics, reading assessment, and research design. He has co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, books, and technical reports, and his work has been recognized by awards from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, the International Literacy Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Society for Technology in Education. He presently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities and Elementary School Journal and as an editorial board member for other educational journals.
