James Madison University
PHOTO:Rittenhouse and Brevard discuss research

The Freshmen 15 - It's All About Prevention

In the middle of the 2009-2010 academic year, freshmen received an e-mail from Dr. Melissa Rittenhouse and Alumni Emily Brown, asking the students to participate in a survey about their perceptions of the Freshmen 15. Read More »

News & Announcements

2012 CISAT Faculty Award Recipients Announced More >

JMU Student Recieves VOTA Scholarship Sarah DiDomenico is the The Virginia Occupational Therapy Association (VOTA) Graduate Student Scholarship Award winner for 2011. More >

O. Ashton Trice Scholarship Founded This memorial scholarship is open to all School Psychology students and is awarded to the student with the highest GPA and exceptional academic performance, honoring the intent of the donor. More >

JMU-RMH Collaborative Fall 2011 Research Rounds Announced All meetings in RMH Lower Level Conference Rooms 2 and 3. More >

JMU Graduate Programs Honored

Posted May 28, 2008

The 2009 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” published by the US News & World Report has ranked two CISAT graduate programs.

JMU’s Audiology program has been ranked #19 along with four other universities’ programs among 72 graduate programs nationwide. 

The Speech-Language Pathology program was ranked along with seven other schools at #38 in a grouping of 230 other programs. 

All programs included in the rankings by US News & World Report are accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.  These rankings are based on peer assessment surveys.  Survey participants were asked to rate the academic quality of programs on a 5 point scale: outstanding (5 points) – marginal (1 point) and these scores were averaged.  The Audiology program scored 3.2 and the Speech-Language Pathology received a score of 3.3.

In her comments about the rankings, Communication Sciences & Disorders department head Dr. Vicki A Reed stated, “It's a true pleasure to see the well-deserved recognition for our great audiology and speech-language pathology graduate programs.  We have extraordinarily bright, high achieving students.  When we combine such great students with a group of faculty with national and international reputations for their expertise and scholarship, excellent facilities, and a supportive administration, our programs' high national rankings really shouldn't be a surprise.  Nevertheless, it feels good for the Department to see that other university programs see the same quality of these JMU programs.”

One example of the quality of these students is their scores on The National Examination (Praxis ll).  From 2001 to January, 2008, students in Speech-Language Pathology have achieved a 99.5% pass rate on their first attempts at the national examination, for an average score of 710. From 2001 to January, 2008, students in Audiology have achieved a 93% pass rate on their first attempts at the national examination, with all passing on their second attempt. The average Praxis II score has been 641. A passing score is 600.