Callier Center More Than Doubles Space on Richardson Campus

UT Dallas’ Callier Center for Communication Disorders has opened its new $22 million facility on the Richardson campus. The building already is being used for classes and now is being prepared for clinical patients.

According to the center’s director, the new building also will allow space in the adjacent, older Callier facility to be opened up for research.

“The main reason we did this was to expand the School of Behavioral and Brain Science’s (BBS) research capabilities in communication disorders and related areas,” said Dr. Thomas Campbell, Ludwig A. Michael, MD, Executive Director of the Callier Center and Sara T. Martineau Professor. “It allows us to hire more faculty and to integrate our research with other schools within the University.”

The Callier Center provides in-depth, advanced evaluations and innovative treatments for children and adults with a wide variety of speech, language and hearing disorders. At its offices in Richardson and Dallas, the center provides services to approximately 4,000 patients.

In addition, the center supports the nationally ranked academic programs in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. U.S. News & World Report ranks UT Dallas’ audiology program No. 4 in the nation and its speech-language-pathology program No. 12. Faculty based at Callier also do significant research in communications disorders.

Callier’s Richardson location has been housed in a 20,000-square-foot building located on the north side of campus. The facility not only accommodated clinical programs, but also student training and some research.

Campbell said the clinical and teaching programs will be moving to the new, 50,000-square-foot building, which will leave the older facility dedicated to research.

“There will be a number of labs there that will be shared and open to people in the University. It also provides us a place where we can actually take human participants. It is set up perfectly for clinical research.”

The new 50,000-square-foot Callier Richardson building includes three classrooms, additional faculty offices, a new home for BBS’ Center for Children and Families, and expanded clinic space.

“Right now we do not have enough space in the original Callier Center to accommodate all of our clinical training needs for graduate students. Soon, however, the adult communication learning program, for example, will have its own space. So it’s really about having better space to train our students to see patients and providing additional capacity for clinical service.”

One of Campbell’s favorite rooms is the interactive pod class — a high-tech classroom that allows increased interaction among students and teachers. Each pod within the room has six seats where students can plug in their computers so that the screen displays on a large screen right in front of them. In addition, an instructor can choose a particular computer screen to display at the front of the room.

At a recent ribbon-cutting event for the new building, visitors also were impressed with the courtyard area that connects the old building with the new one. The outdoor space is called the Bert Moore Courtyard, in honor of the former BBS dean who died last year.

Campbell said Moore was an early supporter of the building, working with him and the Foundation for the Callier Center to make the expansion a reality.

“Everybody on the board was quite aware of what he did for Callier and also what he did for the foundation board itself. He was there at the beginning, at the conception of all of this. That automatically made him quite close to the place, and he supported it through thick and thin,” Campbell said.