Introduction to Early Pioneers

Dr. Lee E. Travis, staff and students at the Speech Clinic at the U. of Iowa (circa 1930s)

“Many have asked me what it was about Iowa that produced so many of the individuals who built the first programs of speech pathology throughout the land and my only answer has been that it was Lee Edward Travis.”

- Charles Van Riper, ASHA, November 1981

During the 1930s and 1940s, the University of Iowa produced a prolific number of graduates who went on to become leaders in the emerging field of speech-language pathology and in the relatively young association that would become ASHA. Many future speech-language-pathologists would be able to trace their academic roots back to the programs at Iowa and the students there who would go on to establish their own programs in colleges and universities across the country. Until the late 1950s, ninety percent of the college speech programs and speech clinics were staffed by Iowa graduates.