Charles Van Riper

Charles was the subject of the Western Michigan University's informal talk for emeriti and friends on November 14, 2007, which discussed his professional history and writings about his childhood. Moreover, an award has been named after him: the Charles Van Riper Award "recognizes the achievements of individuals who have known the anguish of stuttering and the success of achieving effective communication". A series of nine films that show several of his therapy sessions with an adult stutterer and discusses the long term effectiveness of the therapy, has been called a "classic".

In 1936, Charles was hired by the Western State Normal School in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He founded and headed its speech clinic, and was the first chair of its speech pathology and audiology department. During his subsequent career he became internationally known as a pioneer in the development of the science of speech pathology; he worked with thousands of stutterers, did research, and published a large number of books, articles and films on the subject. Under the pseudonym "Cully Gage", Charles also wrote The Northwoods Reader, a series of books based on life in Champion.

Charles Van Riper developed stuttering modification therapy between 1936 and 1958. This type of therapy focussed on reducing the fears and anxieties of adult stutterers, and added methods to modify the "core behaviors" of stuttering, to make them less physically stressful. This therapy is one of the most widely practiced stuttering treatments. Additionally, several of his books were the authoritative books on the subject for a number of years, namely The Nature of Stuttering, The Treatment of Stuttering and Speech Correction: Principles and Methods, the latter book being the first textbook in the field. Textbooks he authored have been used in both undergraduate and graduate courses in stuttering.

Charles Gage Van Riper (December 1, 1905 – September 25, 1994) was a renowned speech therapist who became internationally known as a pioneer in the development of speech pathology. A severe stutterer throughout his career, he is described as having had the most influence of any speech-language pathologist in the field of stuttering.