Patrcia M. Zebrowski

Patricia M. Zebrowski is Professor Emerita (2018) at the University of Iowa and holds both the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Certificate of Clinical Competence and is an American Board of Fluency and Fluency Disorders Board (ABFFD) Recognized Specialist in stuttering therapy. She has mentored numerous Masters and PhD students at the University of Iowa (1988-2018) from the beginning to the end of their degrees. Before retiring from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Tricia’s research, teaching and clinical work in the onset, nature and treatment of stuttering in children, with emphasis on the adolescent who stutters.

In recent years, Tricia’s research in how to assess teenagers’ readiness to engage in stuttering therapy led to the development of four interdependent scales of change readiness that have been empirically validated and expanded to explore their utility with adults who stutter. For over 20 years Dr. Zebrowski was both the developer and director of UISPEAKS, a residential treatment program for teens who stutter. This experience gave her a deeper understanding of these young people's lived experiences and an opportunity to explore different methods for helping teenagers choose personally meaningful goals and processes in therapy. As part of this experience, Dr. Zebrowski has clinically mentored and supervised dozens of undergraduate and graduate students, and professionals seeking ABFFD specialty recognition through their stuttering therapy clinical practica.

Throughout her 47-year career in speech-language pathology, Tricia has given over 245 state, national and international (e.g., Belgium, China, England, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Turkey) research and clinical presentations and workshops, and developed a variety of commercial and noncommercial educational materials related to stuttering therapy. She has authored, co-authored, and edited two textbooks on the nature and treatment of stuttering, and published over 75 research and clinical papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings.