J. Scott Yaruss

J. Scott Yaruss (he/him) is a professor of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, a practicing speech-language pathologist with more than 30 years of clinical experience, and a board-certified specialist in fluency disorders. He joined the faculty of MSU in 2017, with the overarching goal helping speech-language pathologists improve their ability to provide meaningful and lasting support for people who live with stuttering.

Yaruss has published more than 115 peer-reviewed articles, as well as more than 275 other articles, chapters, and books about stuttering. He has given hundreds of continuing education workshops, seminars, and other presentations at local, national, and international conferences. He has also served in various posts for the Special Interest Group for Fluency Disorders of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and on the Board of Directors of the National Stuttering Association (NSA). He has been active in the stuttering self-help community for more 20 years, and he has been recognized with the NSA's "Speech-Language Pathologist of the Year" and "Hall of Fame" awards. In 2022, he and colleague Dr. Robert W. Quesal were recognized with the International Fluency Associations "Award for Improving the Lives of People Who Stutter" for their work on developing the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES; Yaruss & Quesal, 2006, 2016).

Prior to coming to MSU, Yaruss was at the University of Pittsburgh and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, where he led the Stuttering Center of Western Pennsylvania. He  holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and psychology from the University of California Berkeley, and a master’s and doctorate in speech-language pathology from Syracuse University. While at the University of Pittsburgh, he was recognized with the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award.

In 2011, he co-founded Stuttering Therapy Resources (https://www.StutteringTherapyResources.com), a specialty publishing company focused on providing practical materials for helping speech-language pathologists help those who stutter. Key publications include: School-Age Stuttering Therapy: A Practical Guide, Early Childhood Stuttering Therapy: A Practical Guide, Minimizing Bullying for Children Who Stutter, and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES), a comprehensive instrument used around the world to measure the adverse impact of stuttering on people's lives.

Yaruss's current research focuses on the experience of stuttering from the perspective of individuals who stutter. In 2020, he received a 5-year R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health / National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH/NIDCD) to study the variability of stuttering across situations. The goal is to learn more about the nature of the breakdown in communication, both at the level of speech production and in terms of the broader life impact experienced by those who stutter. Yaruss is also conducting several survey-based projects examining the impact of stuttering on people's lives. Find out more at the website of the Spartan Stuttering Laboratory: https://StutteringLab.msu.edu.

Yaruss conducts research on fluency disorders such as stuttering and cluttering. His goal is to enhance clinical and didactic opportunities to help student and community clinicians develop their skills for working with individuals with these and other communication disorders. He collaborates with his MSU colleagues to create a research and treatment center for fluency disorders that combines effective communication, cutting-edge technology, and the latest research-based treatment approaches.

Yaruss continually seeks to expand his knowledge and understanding of communication disorders through ongoing research and new partnerships with scientists and educators. His primary goal is to collaborate with his MSU colleagues in building a world-class department for educating speech-language pathologists and furthering our understanding of stuttering and related communication issues.

Research Centers and Labs

Health and Risk Communication Center (HRCC)

Center for Research in Autism, Intellectual, and Other Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (C-RAIND)