Stephanie joined the Allied Health & Human Performance unit at the commencement of Semester 1 2021, coming to UniSA as a clinical speech pathologist with 30 years’ experience who has dedicated herself to assisting children with speech, language and literacy issues, including dyslexia. She has also assisted transgender adults with authentic gender identification and new arrivals in Australia with accent modification. In 2010, Stephanie completed her PhD on the topic of The receptive language and reading difficulties in students diagnosed with auditory processing disorder (APD).
Stephanie commenced her career as a speech pathologist with the Department of Education and Children’s Services in Port Pirie and Adelaide for 7 years, during which time she was the speech pathologist for the Language Support Class at Brighton, South Australia for 3 years. She also developed the screening tool known as the Screen of Phonological Awareness (SPA) in 1996. The SPA is now widely used in schools around Australia in research and to detect young children at risk of literacy failure.
Having commenced in private practice in 1995, Stephanie worked as a speech pathologist in a multi-disciplinary practice at O’Halloran Hill and at Westminster School. She was co-president of the SA Branch of Speech Pathology Australia during 2004 and then relocated with her family to Brisbane for 4 years from 2005-2008, working in Catholic schools, in private practice and serving on the management committee of SPELD(QLD) while studying for her PhD. Stephanie returned to Adelaide in January 2009 and has worked in private practice since that time (Adelaide Speech Pathology Services and TALK Speech Pathology), in addition to owning a bookshop for 4 years, serving on the management committee of SPELD(SA) and lecturing in Singapore for the Flinders University of South Australia. In 2019, she spent three months teaching English in Spain, and acquired her International TESOL Certificate. During 2020, Stephanie also undertook the provision of teletherapy services on a national basis with Therapy Connect, based in Victoria.
Stephanie has always aspired to share her accumulated knowledge with the next generation of speech pathologists through a lecturing role, and is delighted to be given this opportunity at UniSA, the University of Enterprise.