Victoria S. Henbest

Victoria S. Henbest is an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist and assistant professor in the Speech Pathology and Audiology Department at the University of South Alabama where she teaches the undergraduate introductory courses on language and speech disorders as well as the graduate-level school-age language and literacy and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) courses. Dr. Henbest earned a Bachelor of Science in Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Arkansas, a Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology from Missouri State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Prior to earning her doctoral degree, Dr. Henbest worked for 5 years as a full-time clinician in a public-school early childhood setting with pre-school age children with speech, language, and literacy needs including children on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disabilities, and medically complex children.  Since joining the faculty at the University of South Alabama, Dr. Henbest’s clinical service provision has been through clinical education where she has supported graduate student clinicians with evaluation and intervention for school-age children with spoken and written language difficulties.  Dr. Henbest’s primary research interests include word-level reading and spelling and the relation between linguistic awareness skills, particularly morphological awareness, and literacy development. She has published and presented on these topics at the state, national, and international levels. As part of this work, Dr. Henbest is co-author of a standardized test of morphological awareness entitled the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading (MATRS).