The Tom and Charlene Marsh Family Foundation created a new endowment to benefit the TWU Department of Communication Sciences and Oral Health by funding research-enhancing activities in neurology, neuroscience and communication sciences and disorders.

The endowment was created to honor the life work of Delaina Walker-Batson, PhD, recently retired TWU Cornaro Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders and founding director of TWU’s Stroke Center-Dallas. The center, located in the T. Boone Pickens' Institute of Health Sciences on the university’s Dallas campus, has served as an instrumental resource for patients across the state and nation since 1992.

For more than three decades, Walker-Batson has explored treatments to accelerate and increase recovery from language and motor deficits post stroke. She received the James H. Shannon Outstanding Biomedical Research Award from the National Institutes of Health. Before retiring earlier this year, Walker-Batson’s graduate-level teaching specialty was neurological and neurodegenerative causes of speech and language disorders.