Our Staff


Michael Kiefte, Program Coordinator
PhD, Phonetics (University of Alberta)
BA, Linguistics (Memorial University)

Dr. Michael Kiefte is a researcher and professor in phonetics and speech sciences at Dalhousie University. He oversees operation of the accent clinic and collaborates with staff there to develop evidence-based practice in accent training, a relatively new area of research in phonetics and speech-language pathology. He conducts research on vowel sounds, listeners’ perception of ‘accentedness' in non-native speakers of English, and other topics that are directly related to accent training. For more information about Dr. Michael Kiefte's research, please go to his page located in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders website.


Catherine Sweet, Staff Speech-Language Pathologist
MA, Speech-Language Pathology (University of Maine)
MA, Comparative Religions (McMaster University)

Catherine Sweet is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist in Canada and the United States. She became interested in studying Speech-Language Pathology when she discovered it was the perfect intersection of her loves of teaching and phonology (the study of speech sounds). She is a native English speaker from the east coast of Canada, and has lived in the US, the UK, and in five Canadian provinces. She has studied French, German, and Japanese, and knows that hearing and producing the differences in a non-native language’s sounds can be a challenge. It takes hard work and training, and admires all the effort her clients put into their training.