EXPERTISE
Speech‑language pathology education and clinical training
Language and literacy development
Evidence‑informed clinical practice
Ethical and sustainable global learning
Health equity and access to rehabilitation services
FACULTY PROFILE
Nicole M. Bing, Ph.D., CCC‑SLP, is the Department Chair and an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at Governors State University (GSU). In her role as chair, she provides academic and administrative leadership for the department, including oversight of graduate program operations, curriculum, accreditation, faculty development, and student success. She is a certified and licensed speech‑language pathologist and a member of the American Speech‑Language‑Hearing Association and the Illinois Speech‑Language‑Hearing Association.
Dr. Bing brings more than 25 years of clinical experience in pediatric communication disorders, with expertise in language disorders, reading disabilities, speech sound disorders, and culturally responsive practices in school‑based populations ages 3–21. Although she no longer teaches in a regular course rotation as department chair, her leadership is firmly grounded in teaching excellence and curriculum design. Prior to assuming the chair role, she taught extensively across undergraduate and graduate coursework, including language and literacy disorders, speech sound disorders, phonetics, anatomy and physiology of speech and hearing, and advanced assessment and intervention, and served as lead faculty for community‑based clinical education. This instructional background continues to inform her leadership of curriculum, faculty support, and graduate program quality.
A defining feature of Dr. Bing’s leadership - both prior to and since becoming department chair - is development of universal, structured support systems that promote belonging, academic rigor, and professional growth for all students. While these supports are particularly critical for students of color, who remain significantly underrepresented in the field of Communication Disorders, her work is grounded in the belief that inclusive, transparent, and developmentally responsive training environments strengthen programs for every learner. Dr. Bing’s leadership challenges rigid gatekeeping norms that privilege high GPAs, effortless academic performance, or early clinical ease as markers of professional potential and worthiness. Instead, she emphasizes that academic performance and clinical competence are cultivated through guided practice, feedback, reflection, and time. Through intentional program design, mentoring structures, and faculty collaboration, she fosters learning environments that pair high expectations with clear pathways and sustained support, ensuring rigor without exclusion.
Dr. Bing is also an international educator with more than a decade of experience designing and leading faculty‑led global learning programs across Europe, Asia, Central America, and West Africa. Prior to joining GSU, she led international education experiences in London and Oxford using a City as Text model of instruction and in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, China, where students examined transdisciplinary models of rehabilitation medicine integrating Eastern and Western clinical approaches.
At GSU, she has served as a faculty leader with the Study Abroad program since AY 2017-2018 and has been a faculty leader for the Public Health Brigade program for nine of its eleven years. Through international service‑learning experiences in Nicaragua, Panama, and Ghana, she has emphasized ethical global engagement, long‑term partnership, and expanded access to international learning for students who are first-generation and historically underrepresented in global education.
Across her roles as department chair, educator, researcher, clinician, and international program leader, Dr. Bing is committed to preparing students to engage thoughtfully, ethically, and effectively in their professions and communities - locally and globally.
Dr. Bing engages in scholarship that informs and supports program development, teaching, and global learning initiatives. Her work includes publications in peer‑reviewed journals and a sustained record of peer‑reviewed and invited presentations at professional conferences. Her scholarly interests center on the intersection of language, literacy, culture, and disability. While a significant portion of her work has focused on the language and literacy development of African American school‑age children, she also brings expertise in language and reading disabilities among school‑age children with diverse learning and developmental needs. In recent years, her scholarly efforts have increasingly informed programmatic work related to student belonging and inclusion in Communication Disorders training programs, as well as health equity and ethical global learning connected to her international engagement. Her approach to scholarship prioritizes the application of research to support effective, inclusive, and sustainable educational practices.
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
2020 – Present Co-Investigators. Horton, R., Bing, N., & Johnson, V. Pilot project investigating language and literacy development in African-American children with a focus on identifying and describing factors that influence both language and literacy development. This project, Teaching and Assessing Language Knowledge for Improved Literacy Outcomes (TALK-ILO), is in the currently in the stage of data collection at partner sites in the Southland Chicago area.
PUBLICATIONS
Horton, R., Johnson, V., & Koonce, N.M. (2018). From here to there and back again: Re-examining the literature on African American children’s language. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 3 (SIG 14), 57-70.
Johnson, V., & Koonce, N.M. (2018). Language sampling considerations for AAE Speakers: A patterns- and systems-based approach. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 3 (SIG 3), 36-42.
Koonce, N.M. (2015). When it comes to explaining: A preliminary investigation of the expository language skills of African American school age children. Topics in Language Disorders, 35(1), 76-89.
Scott, C.M., & Koonce, N.M. (2013). Syntactic contributions to literacy learning. In C.A. Stone, E. Silliman, & G. Wallach (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
Koonce, N.M., & Jones, V. On the outside looking in: The underrepresentation of African American students with learning disabilities in special education reading research. Manuscript in preparation.
Koonce, N.M. Structural elements in the narratives of African American school-age children. Manuscript in preparation.
Curriculum Vitae
LinkedIn Profile