Readers of this issue of Topics in Language Disorders will have an opportunity to observe the formation of a new direction in Communication Sciences and Disorders as they peruse the chapters herein. Issue Editor Schery has gathered together authors whose professional backgrounds span a number of disciplines and have come together to provide us with an initial rendering of the status of their combined efforts to assist children who may benefit from cochlear implants. Schery notes in her Foreword that time has seen great changes in many aspects of the development of the technology, approaches to surgery, lowering of the age of infants and toddlers who may benefit, and the training of those who would enter into this specialty area.

Those readers who have seen time go by during the last decades of the 20th century and the opening years in the 21st century may be taken aback by the plethora of new areas of practice and the need to continue their education even in the areas of practice in which they feel more comfortable. The broadening of the scope of practice in both Speech-Language-Pathology and Audiology brings "life-long learning" into sharp focus for faculty in college and university educational programs, for their students, their graduates, and practitioners whose state and national associations and state licensure boards are demanding currency of those they license and relicense.

As time goes by, it becomes ever more evident that there will be a further expansion in our field, and that there will be a need for those practitioners who are speech-language clinicians, educators of the deaf, educational audiologists, and early interventionists (as Schery points out) to have specialized training. We have only to note the specialty divisions in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association-which now number approximately 15-and in the American Psychology Association, older by far-which now have more than 50 divisions to meet the needs of their members.

At this time it is interesting to read the articles that make up this issue and to know that deaf children and their parents now have new options by which auditory information may become available. That is not to say that the learning of language is an easy task either for the children or their parents or the professionals who support the effort. However, some time ago, a famous author said: "Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be 'delightful.'" (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950).

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