Full name: Sharon Brown-Sweeny
Nickname: Shari
Title: Clinical Assistant, Professor, Lecturer
Department:Communication Science and Disorders
Professor Brown-Sweeny was started working for Saint Xavier University in the Spring Semester of the 2012-2013 academic school year as an adjunct professor. This semester was hired as a half-time professor.
Before working for Saint Xavier, Brown-Sweeny attended Northwestern University for her undergraduate and master’s degrees. After the completion of her master’s she worked as a speech pathologist. Some years after working as a speech pathologist she returned to Northwestern to receive her Ph.D.
“I’ve always wanted to teach,” said Brown-Sweeny. Her time at Saint Xavier is not her first time teaching. Brown-Sweeny worked as an adjunct professor at Elmhurst College for fourteen years. When asked about how she got the job here she said one of her friends at SXU told her about the opening.
She had nearly no complaints about her new workplace, Saint Xavier. The traffic she encountered on her twenty-minute commute from her home in Homewood Flossmoor was her only complaint. However, she does like the shorter commute as compared to the trip to Elmhurst, which is over double the length.
Brown-Sweeny’s favorite thing about Saint Xavier is the people she encounters here. She is really enjoying the staff, faculty and students she works with. She is especially happy with her department and how wonderful the students and her coworkers have been with her.
While not teaching or practicing, Brown-Sweeny loves playing the piano. She accompanies a choir, as well as many jr. high and high school students when they compete in their solo and ensemble competitions.
She also like to garden, read and sail. She owns a small boat that she occasionally sails on Lake Michigan. Brown-Sweeny also has three kids in their late teens or early twenties; a son and two daughters.
Brown-Sweeny believes her subject area, Communication Science and Disorders, is very important because communication is one of the most important factors in anyone’s life.
It is definitely a career path that requires much service. She encourages non-majors to take her “Intro to Communication Disorders” in the summer or fall semesters. Next semester, Brown-Sweeny will be teaching “Phonology,” a course for CSDI majors.
David Rodriguez
News Editor