Rate My Professor Alison Hendricks

Alison E. Hendricks is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. She holds a PhD in Language Science and Applied Germanic Languages from Pennsylvania State University. Hendricks directs the UB Language Learning Lab, conducting research on language acquisition in elementary school-aged children with and without language impairments, including Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Her investigations emphasize how children learn from linguistic input, focusing on input quantities and types, grammatical structure acquisition, sociolinguistic factors, dialect variations, and improving identification of DLD in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. She teaches courses including CDS 286: Phonetics, CDS 444/544: Phonological Disorders - Diagnosis and Management, and CDS 449/549: Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in CSD.

Hendricks has served as Principal Investigator on NIH grant R21DC018355 to advance evidence-based practices in communication disorders research. She is the Validation of Impacts Lead for the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, a $20 million NSF grant awarded to the University at Buffalo in collaboration with eight other institutions, developing AI solutions for early detection of speech and language impairments and virtual teaching assistants for ability-based interventions. Her key publications include "Identifying children at risk for developmental language disorder using a brief, whole-classroom screen" (Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2019), "Reading and math achievement in children with dyslexia, developmental language disorder, or typical development: Achievement gaps persist from second through fourth grades" (Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2022), "Production of morphosyntax within and across different dialects of American English" (Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2020), "Teacher report of students’ dialect use and language ability" (Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2021), and "Language assessment with children who speak nonmainstream dialects: Examining the effects of scoring modifications in norm-referenced assessment" (Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2017). Her scholarship informs clinical practices for equitable language assessment and support.