ALBANY – The New York State Speech-Lang-uage-Hearing Association honored Kim L. Tillery, Ph.D., CCC-A of the State University of New York at Fredonia with the Distinguished Achievement award at its annual convention in Saratoga Springs.

The Distinguished Ach-ievement award is given annually to a NYSSLHA member who has distinguished him or herself in a discipline of communica-tion sciences and disorders and/or the profession of speech-language pathology and audiology by virtue of their outstanding academic, clinical and/or research contributions.

Tillery began work as an assistant professor at the Department of Commun-ication Disorders and Sciences at SUNY Fre-donia, then associate pro-fessor, then full professor in 2010.

She has served as the department’s chair since 2004. She led the department through new reaccreditation standards from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Assoc-iation and instituted a two-year graduate program.

She led the department in increasing graduate student enrollments by over 75 percent and has overseen many initiatives to increase programming, certification opportunities, fundraising, and clinical facility expansion.

She has mentored and participated in dozens of student presentations, clearly impacting future leaders in communication disorders. In addition, she was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009.

Tillery’s most notable accomplishments include authoring or contributing to more than 30 publications, journals and chapters of textbooks and presenting more than 139 times at local, state, international, and national forums, including the NYSSLHA convention.

“An individual as well-rounded and as accomplished as Dr. Tillery, comes along once in a lifetime. NYSSLHA is very proud to be associated with her and to recognize her body of work with our Distinguished Achievement Award,” said Jane Coyle, NYSSLHA President.

The NYSSLHA has served as the trade association for the state’s speech-language pathologists and audiologists for more than 50 years.

To learn more about NYSSLHA, visit www.nysslha.org.