Barbara Ekelman

Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Dr. Barbara Ekelman is a certified, licensed speech-language pathologist in private practice, clinical associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). She established the school-aged language and literacy course at CWRU in 2003 and has co-taught this graduate level class for many years in the Department of Psychological Sciences.

Dr. Ekelman has 30+ years of academic, clinical, and research experience in childhood, adolescent, and adult language and learning disorders. She began her career as a clinician and researcher in the Division of Pediatric Neurology at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. She has designed research, presented papers, and published articles in the areas of language-learning disabilities, childhood stroke, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism (hyperlexia), dyslexia, and developmental apraxia. Most of her time now is spent in her private practice evaluating school aged children and young adults who are experiencing learning difficulties.

Dr. Ekelman has worked many years with area schools to complete speech-language, and learning screenings. Most recently, Dr. Ekelman developed the Well Screening for kindergarten and pre-kindergarten classrooms, which quickly provides a baseline and monitoring tool for all children and determines if a child is at-risk for language-learning difficulties. The Well Screener is a unique, comprehensive, 20-minute, animated screener that measures growth in receptive and expressive language, social communication, early literacy, reading, attention, math calculation, motor skills, and speech sound production. The screener identifies young children who may be “at risk” for developmental language disorders, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, dyscalculia, and/or speech sound disorders.

Dr. Ekelman’s professional memberships include the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association (ASHA) and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). She serves on the Advisory Board for the Early Intervention Related Services Training Program at CWRU, which is funded by the Department of Education. She served on the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center (CHSC) and the International Dyslexia Association of Northern Ohio. She also served as the ASHA Continuing Education (CE) Administrator for the greater Cleveland area.