Raising Future Speech Pathologists While Filling Gaps in Knowledge

After 20 years in clinical practice, Dr. Adrianna Shembel transitioned from a career as a licensed speech-language pathologist to an academic research. Her aim is to improve understanding of functional voice disorders, which could lead to developing novel methods for their diagnosis and management. 

“I love being a speech-language pathologist because I can treat and help people one-on-one in the therapy room,” Shembel said. “But with research, you’re also really helping people on a much more global scale. By helping understand what the condition is that you are dealing with, you are not only helping the patients themselves, but you can also inform clinicians how to best manage their patients, which has a much broader impact.”

At the UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Shembel serves as assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing. She also holds a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center and serves as principal investigator of the Integrative Laryngeal BioPhysiology Lab, a cross-institution collaboration between UT Dallas and UT Southwestern.

“There are really no good diagnostic strategies or standard management for the types of functional voice disorders—like primary muscle tension dysphonia—that we study,” she said. “So we’re looking at different underlying physiological mechanisms that may be contributing or causing these clinical presentations in patients with these functional voice disorders that report lots of vocal fatigue, vocal effort, and vocal discomfort with voice-use after a short period of time despite having a normal looking larynx.”

After decades of diagnosing and treating voice and laryngeal disorders, Shembel noticed a troubling gap in clinical knowledge. Functional voice disorders, which affected many of her patients, remained poorly understood and under-researched.

“When I was seeing patients, around 40% to 60% of my caseload were these functional voice disorders,” Shembel said. “That’s a huge percentage of people on your caseload that you don’t know what is causing this issue and how to best support their recovery.”

Outside her researcher role, Shembel prepares UT Dallas students to become licensed speech-language pathologists. She teaches graduate courses on communication disorders required for all students going into this field.

Shembel is one of five BBS faculty members joining the newest cohort of UT Dallas endowed chairs and professors. This year, she received the Fellow, Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professorship. 

The McDermott Professorships recognize and honor outstanding UT Dallas tenure-system faculty members in the earlier stages of their academic careers. This appointment provides early career support and recognition to faculty members who have established extraordinary records of research productivity, teaching excellence, and university service. 

The professorship honors Eugene McDermott – a scientist, industrialist, and philanthropist who co-founded Texas Instruments and UT Dallas.  

Endowed chairs and professorships are the highest academic award the University can bestow on a faculty member. The endowments, funded through philanthropic donations, fund initiatives that advance research and instructional programs. UT Dallas has more than 175 chairs and professorships, with several established by or honoring the University’s founders and early leaders.