James Holloway, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of New Mexico | The University of New Mexico
James Holloway, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of New Mexico | The University of New Mexico
Dr. Philip Dale, an 81-year-old Professor Emeritus from the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, has spent his retirement years continuing his work in research and contributing to the understanding of children's language development. Despite retiring from The University of New Mexico (UNM) a decade ago, Dale remains active in his field.
Dale began his academic journey with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from The University of Chicago in 1963. His interest shifted to psychology and linguistics as child language studies gained prominence in America. He later earned a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences from The University of Michigan.
Dale's career included teaching Psychology at The University of Washington and serving as Chair at The University of Missouri's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences before joining UNM in 2006. He retired from UNM in 2014 but continues to work on various projects annually.
"At last count, I had something over 50 publications since I retired and that amazed me," Dale remarked. "It’s not what I expected, my career, especially the second half of it."
His collaborative efforts span across countries like the UK, Denmark, and Japan. A significant project he worked on involved reviving the "Parent Report" method for measuring young children’s development.
"We showed if you do the right research and ask the questions carefully while analyzing the data properly, parents are remarkably good reporters," said Dale.
The instrument developed through this project is now widely used worldwide, with around 60 to 70 versions available for different languages.
“We have measures from about eight months to almost four years old," explained Dale. "We can say one child is in the 70th percentile...and another is in the 7th percentile."
Recently, Dale has focused on assessing language disorders among Spanish-speaking individuals in the United States. “Our research group developed these instruments...for evaluating a child’s Spanish,” he noted.
Dr. Dale's continued contributions demonstrate his commitment to advancing research even during retirement.
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