Award, returned to his alma mater in April.
Patrick J. “Jerry” Carney ’58/65 clearly remembers that day 51 years ago when he stepped into the Institute of Logopedics field office in Pittsburg, Kan.
He saw the immediate impact the operation was having on people’s lives — individuals who needed help and were finding the resources and caring providers who could assist them.
At that moment, Carney knew what he wanted his professional life to be. “I fell in love with the field,” he says. “I wanted to help others be able to change themselves.”
The young University of Wichita student went on to earn a degree in secondary education with logopedics as his major and later earned a master’s degree from WSU and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Carney, professor emeritus of audiology and speech pathology at the University of Tennessee, has had a long and distinguished career, including a yearlong stint as the national president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. As president, he was called on to address issues in the field; it was a high-profile year that featured a TV appearance on “Good Morning America.”
Carney is the recipient of the WSU Communication Sciences and Disorders Outstanding Alumni Award. It was presented to him during an April 17 ceremony on campus.
Rosalind Scudder, WSU professor and graduate coordinator in the CSD department, says Carney has a reputation for being supportive to others in the profession. “He truly has been a mentor and a good friend,” she says. “We always thought of the Carneys with the pizza business, but Jerry has made a national impact too, on our field, our graduates and people with communication disorders.”
Another longtime Carney friend and associate, Jack Jonas, says Carney’s award is well deserved recognition of years of hard work and achievement. Jonas, founder and president emeritus of the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation, also knows a personal side of Carney, as his twin brother married into the Carney family. “Oh, he can be pretty ornery, as well,” Jonas adds.
Born and raised in Wichita and a 1954 graduate of St. Mary’s High School, Carney has some famous siblings: Brothers Frank and Dan founded and developed Pizza Hut Inc. Carney has tremendous pride, respect and admiration for his bothers’ success, but he’s pleased that he found such satisfaction in what he chose to do, too. “I’ve been very fortunate,” he says.
Carney’s academic life was spent at UT, which provided him an opportunity to teach and conduct and direct research. His 25-page vita is packed with three decades of work covering numerous publications, presentations, grants and community activities. During his UT tenure, he served as department chair from 1986 through 2001, when he retired.
Working with people — especially young people — and seeing them overcome hurdles, blossom and grow is especially rewarding for Carney. Certainly, he reflects, he could have achieved greater financial gain in another calling, but there are other rewards, he says, ones that have made his life so incredibly rich.
“It blew my mind when I saw kids doing something they said they couldn’t do,” he says. “That’s the payoff.”
