Cultivating Innovation and Collaboration
Rajinder Koul has been named chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of Texas at Austin Moody College of Communication. Koul will take the post starting July 15, 2017. He follows Craig Champlin, who has served as interim chair since 2016.
Koul said he is humbled by the prospect of working with the talented and dedicated faculty and staff in the department and is committed to sustaining and elevating its academic programs, research enterprise and clinical services.
“My goal is to cultivate innovation and seek interdisciplinary opportunities with the Dell Medical School and other entities within and outside the university,” said Koul. “With a long tradition of research excellence and leadership, the department is poised to be a ‘destination of choice’ for highly qualified students and faculty in the nation and across the world.”
Koul is the assistant vice president of research at Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center and served as associate dean for research at the School of Health Professions for a decade. He’s served in the Department of Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences at Texas Tech since 1994, climbing from assistant and associate professor to professor, co-director of the Ph.D. program and chair.
Koul’s research is devoted to investigating efficacy of augmentative and alternative communication intervention in people with acquired and developmental disabilities and the variables that influence the outcomes of such interventions. His recent studies are focused on the effectiveness of speech output technologies in interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
In his vision, Koul stated that he plans to enhance the graduate and undergraduate programs, strengthen research enterprise, cultivate innovation and interdisciplinary opportunities, ensure space and clinical facilities are state-of-the-art, and engage and serve the community.
He is the recipient of the Mary E. Switzer Distinguished Fellowship for an outstanding contribution to the advancement of rehabilitation research from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research in the United States Department of Education. Koul earned two Fulbright Specialist grants to the University of Pretoria in South Africa and to Hallym University in South Korea, is a fellow of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, and serves as co-editor of the Evidence Based Communication Assessment and Intervention Journal.
Koul earned his Ph.D. in speech-language pathology from Purdue University.
