C. Melanie Schuele

C. Melanie Schuele, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University and directs the Child Language and Literacy Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in the Child Language Doctoral Program at the University of Kansas and is a speech-language pathologist certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association since 1985 and licensed in Tennessee. Her clinical and research expertise focuses on preschool and school-age children with language impairment, including specific language impairment/developmental language disorder, as well as phonological awareness, early literacy, and complex syntax development.

Schuele is co-creator and coauthor of The Intensive Phonological Awareness (IPA) Program, a field-tested, evidence-based Tier 2 curriculum designed as a small-group, supplemental intervention to build phonological awareness skills—rhyming, initial sounds, final sounds, and complete segmentation—for struggling learners in kindergarten through second grade. The program was initially developed and self-published in the late 1990s and later revised and published by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. in 2014 as The Intensive Phonological Awareness (IPA) Program, coauthored with Naomi D. Murphy, M.S., CCC-SLP.[15