This request is for five years of continuing support for the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders (SRCLD) held annually at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Funds will provide travel and per diem for invited speakers, travel support for students presenting posters, administrative support for maintaining and updating the database, support for website development, program design and printing and supplies. The excellence of the SRCLD has been documented in several areas including uniqueness, quality of past programs, attendees, student participation, program growth, and the products resulting from the meetings over the past 30 years. The Symposium is the only national conference devoted solely to language disorders research. Over the past 30 years this meeting has achieved the distinction among child language researchers as a high quality scientific meeting fostering research development among professional researchers and doctoral students in training. Past programs have been uniformly of high quality, featuring five to seven invited plenary presentations by prominent researchers and have included increasing numbers of research papers making important contributions to the field. Progress since the last grant began in 2005 includes: 1) an expanded program with over 120 poster presentations and six invited state-of-the-art plenary sessions at the 2009 meeting;2) maintenance of the Elizabeth Bates Memorial Lecture series;3) support of an average of 36 students during the last five years (up from 22 students in 2004) through NIH student travel funds and private donations, with student travel award recipients consisting of 21% under- represented minorities and 85% women;4) continued advances in the website which features online submission and registration;and 5) increased international participation by researchers studying children learning a variety of languages, representing an average of 13 different countries each year during the last grant period.
The purpose of this conference is to promote high quality research and collaboration in the area of child language disorders among a national/international scientific community. The Symposium is the only national conference devoted solely to language disorders research.
