Research
The Covey College of Allied Health Professions is committed to research with the goal
to improve our research collaborations, particularly interdisciplinary collaborations,
and inspire scholarly work, including grant activity. This includes, but not limited
to, identification and leveraging our faculty's expertise, and targeting resources
and opportunities to support scholarly activities.
Research - Funded
Purpose: The purpose of this financial support mechanism is to enable college faculty engaged in research to maintain productivity without undue disruption when a monetary allocation could efficiently support project progress and outcomes.
Award: Applicants can request up to $1000 for a specific research project.
Deadline: Rolling Application
Eligibility: Full-time faculty in the Covey College of Allied Health Professions are encouraged to apply. Only one application can be submitted at a time as PI/Co-PI. If you receive funding, you are ineligible for additional funding for the following 2 fiscal years. Approval from Departmental Chairs is required.
Funding Request Examples: Statistical consultation, publication/presentation costs, participant reimbursement, lab supplies, equipment maintenance, student worker pay, and technology hardware and software purchases.
Previous Awardees:
2022-2023
- Dr. Troy Burley - The Effects of a Self-Paced Musculoskeletal Imaging Course on Musculoskeletal Imaging Competency Among Physical Therapists
- Dr. Gabriela Gorelik - T-cell Signaling in Health and Disease
- Dr. Kimberly Smith - The Effect of Modality Onset Asynchrony and Processing Time on the Recognition of Text-supplemented Speech
- Dr. Robin Mockett - TOR Inhibitor Life Span Replication in Drosophila
- Dr. Victoria Henbest - Morphological Composition & Decomposition: Comparing Third through Sixth Grade Students’ Spoken vs. Written Performance and Relation with Word-Level Reading and Spelling
2021-2022
- Drs. Ashley Flagge & Nicholas Stanley- A Preliminary Examination of Dual Task Cost to Balance During a Speech-in-Noise Listening Task
- Drs. Terrence Ravine & Phoibe Renema - Does Pseudomonas Aeruginosa ExoY Infection of Pulmonary Microvascular Cells Target BCL-XL to Inhibit Intrinsic Apoptosis?
- Dr. Kendrea Garand - Effects of Expiratory Muscle Strength Training on Oropharyngeal Swallow Physiology in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)
Purpose: The purpose of this grant is to foster mentored or independent collaborative, interdisciplinary/interprofessional, discipline-specific or pedagogical research across all units in the Covey College of Allied Health Professions.
Award: Applicants can request up to $5000. An additional $500 is available in professional development funds for peer-reviewed publication and/or submission of external funding within 2 years of the grant termination date.
Deadline: April 17, 2023
Eligibility: All full-time Covey College of Allied Health Professions faculty (regardless of rank) may serve as Principal Investigator (PI). Only one PI is allowed per proposal. Co-investigators may be any rank and associated with an internal or external unit. Applicants may only submit one proposal per cycle.
Funding Request Examples: Statistical consultation, publication/presentation costs, participant reimbursement, lab supplies, equipment maintenance, student worker pay, and technology hardware and software purchases.
Previous Awardees:
2022
- Drs. Phoibe Renema (PI) & Nancy Rice (Co-I) - Development and Implementation of a Biomedical Laboratory Skills Bootcamp for the Purpose of Increasing Student Self-efficacy and Proficiency in STEM Research
- Dr. Padmamalini Thulasiraman - Influence of Hydroxytyrosol on Anticancer Immune Response in Estrogen Stimulated Mammary Carcinoma Cells
2021
- Dr. Richard Cahanin - The Clinical Utility of Alternative Methods of Leg-length Discrepancy Measurement
- Dr. Terrence Ravine - Constructing a Novel Multi-Stack Film Incorporating Antimicrobial Nanoparticles to Cover High-Touch Medical Device Surfaces to Help Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections
- Dr. Kendrea Garand - Efficacy of Expiratory Muscle Strength Training on Oropharyngeal Swallow Physiology in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA): a Pilot Intervention Study
Research Labs
The mission of the Adult Speech and Language Lab (ASLL) is to conduct research that contributes to our understanding of speech and language processing in normal and disordered populations, and understanding the mechanism by which multisensory modalities can be combined to optimize language processing. Ongoing studies in the ASLL investigate the factors that contribute to reading impairments in individuals with aphasia, and how neurotypical individuals, both young and older adults, process degraded speech and text information in unimodal and multimodal conditions.
The Auditory Event-Related Potentials (AERP) Lab is directed by Dr. Tara Davis. In this lab, we use electrophysiological measures to collect brainwaves related to auditory and cognitive processing. This lab has been primarily focused on age-related differences in AERPs; however, our recent projects have also investigated the AERPs of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or those who stutter.
The Autism, Pediatric Language & Literacy (APLL) Lab supports research in a variety of areas. Areas include language development and process for children who are typically developing and language impaired, the language of children with autism, and literacy and phonological awareness impairments. We are interested in the language development for infants through school-aged children.
The mission of the Developmental Stuttering Lab is to investigate the contribution of emotion and language to stuttering and to improve understanding of the mechanism by which emotional and linguistic processes influence stuttering. The lab is directed by Dr. Dahye Choi, who joined the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at USA in August 2015. Dr. Choi earned her Ph.D. in Hearing and Speech Sciences from Vanderbilt University.
The research quest of the Hearing Aid and Aural Rehabilitation (HAAR) Research Lab is to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of aural rehabilitation treatments and hearing aid technologies. Specifically, the research in this lab will seek to investigate the effects of hearing aid use and computerized auditory training on a variety of subjective and objective outcome measures, including measures of listening-related effort, auditory selective and sustained attention and audiovisual integration. We are also interested in using specific measures of speech-in-noise understanding abilities in predicting success with hearing aids in real-world situations, and in developing mathematical models of hearing disability.
In sum, our research will encompass three main activities:- To evaluate aural rehabilitation interventions and hearing aid technologies using behavioral and objective outcome measures.
- To predict individual success with hearing aids and rehabilitative treatments in real world situations.
- To advance the understanding of the effects of audiovisual integration on hearing aid use and benefit.
The Vestibular Research Lab at the University of South Alabama is an interdisciplinary research lab currently conducting research related to balance function in patients with neurologic disorders and patients with known vestibular disorders. One project is specifically aimed at patients with Parkinsonism to help determine early markers for the disorder and to reduce the likelihood of falls in this population. Additional research in the lab is focused on development and validation of a low-cost objective measure of sway in patients with vestibular disorders of peripheral and central origin. The impact of vestibular dysfunction, imbalance, and falls on overall well-being is also being studied in these populations.