In 1971, Ed Hall came to work at CSUN (then, San Fernando Valley State College) in the department now known as Communication Disorders and Sciences and began teaching Speech Pathology. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Communicative Disorders from USC (1979). This semester, after 52 years, he is retiring.
Friends, family and colleagues will celebrate Ed's retirement with him in the coming days. The department has provided this brief overview of Hall's life and career.
During his high school years, Ed Hall lived on Governors Island in New York and had a great interest in Chess. He studied under a professional chess master who required that he memorize 100 chess openings.
He Attended the University of Hawaii majoring in Tropical Agriculture. His main interests, however, were Judo and Kendo and he studied under Migita and Mikami respectively. After graduation, he spent two years in the Airforce and got married and started a great family resulting in four wonderful children.
Wishing to share his good fortune, he adopted in addition two five-year-old boys from an orphanage in Korea and one five year old girl from an orphanage in Hawaii. At that point he became interested in communication difficulties and applied to the Doctoral Program in the Department of Communicative Disorders at USC. This was an extremely challenging program and highly effective.
When he was ready for graduate school, the Masters Program at CSUN was well developed under Dr. Jim Egbert who accepted Hall's application. At that time, the academic department was not located on campus. It was eventually moved closer, to Plummer Street. Dr. Hall (who lived in Reseda) was able to ride his horse to the campus and park the horse during his seminars in the back lawn.
This came to an end when the Department moved to Monterey Hall. Since that time Hall has very happily taught as part of the Communication Disorders and Sciences faculty. He also adopted five more children of native American Indian heritage from Montana. That brought the family to a total of 12 kids. With the birth of Adele Hall 26 years ago, Hall will tell you that the family has reached it’s zenith!
Now in retirement, Hall said he is swarmed with wonderful memories, especially of all the gifted and supportive staff and colleagues that he has been so privileged to work with at CSUN. That, he says, is the overall reward that he has received as a result of his tenure at CSUN.
F 2023
CSUN Communication Disorders and Sciences