Julia Davis, former professor of audiology and the first woman to serve as Chair in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, died unexpectedly March 8, 2013, in Iowa City.

After earning a PhD in Audiology from the University of Southern Mississippi, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Iowa in 1971. She went on to chair the Department for several years and served as an Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Julia was internationally known in her field and pioneered research in language acquisition in hard-of-hearing children and eventually amassed some of the most comprehensive demographic and psycho-educational data ever published on hearing-impaired children in the public schools. Julia wrote the seminal publication Our Forgotten Children: Hard of Hearing Pupils in the Schools and co-authored a textbook, Rehabilitative Audiology for Children and Adults. She successfully published the results of her research in peer-reviewed journals. She served on the Executive Committee for the Academy of Rehabilitation Audiology and as its President (1979-80).

In recognition of her significant contributions to her chosen field, she was awarded the Honors of the Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in 2005. She served as a trustee to the ASHA Foundation, and on the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean's Advisory Board.

Julia will be remembered as an intelligent and beautiful woman with a wicked sense of humor. She possessed a strong sense of right and wrong and was an advocate for fairness and social justice. She was an exceptional educator and mentor. Funeral services were held March 12 in Iowa City. Memorials in Julia’s name can be made to the UI Foundation to be used for the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Crisis Center, Habitat for Humanity, or Table to Table.