T H E O S B O R N E A U R I C L E (Osborne College of Audiology)
Faculty appointments and transitions: Dean Bray announced three appointments for the Pennsylvania Ear Institute, the College’s clinical facility. Susan Calantoni, AuD ’08, has been appointed interim director, Elizabeth Miller Sedunov, AuD is an adjunct faculty member and Kimberly Basilio Ginsberg, AuD ’11, is a parttime staff audiologist. Giriji Sundar, PhD, has been appointed assistant professor and director, Distance Education programs for the College. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Sundar was an adjunct faculty member and a consultant for the development of the College’s distance education programs for two years. News: Shanda Brashears, AuD, adjunct, co-authored a poster which received the second place award at SENTAC (Society for Ear, Nose and Throat Advances in Children in Charleston, SC): “Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Normal Children and Children with Otopathology.” Dean Victor Bray, PhD, received the Joel Wernick Award at the 2012 Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA) meeting “in recognition of an outstanding educational contribution within the fields of audiology and hearing science.” Dr. Bray also was recruited as a technical consultant for the ADA
Benchmarking Task Force for AuD Education and as a member of the ADA 18 x 18 Steering Committee for LLP Status in Audiology. Bre Myers, AuD ’07, adjunct, is the president-elect of the Pennsylvania Academy of Audiology. Martin Pienkowski, PhD, assistant professor, co-authored a piece published in Hearing Research: “Effects of passive, moderate-level sound exposure on the mature auditory cortex: Spectral edges, spectrotemporal density, and realworld noise.” Eileen Rall, AuD, adjunct, has been awarded a grant from the Oberkotter Foundation on Reducing Lost-to-Followup from Newborn Hearing Screening in southeastern PA. Dr. Rall was nominated as a candidate for president-elect of the American Academy of Audiology. Brian Urban, AuD ’06 is now the president-elect of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA). Dr. Urban is the founder and president of CounselEAR, LLC in Evanston, IL. Maxine Young, AuD ’10, adjunct, published “The Gentle Giant: A Tribute to Jack” in the Canadian Hearing Report. This was a special edition “Celebrating Dr. Jack Katz and 50 Years of the SSW Test.”
I N S I G H T S (College of Education and Rehabilitation)
The following appointment was effective July 1, 2012 and was not reported in the fall issue of the magazine: Dean Audrey Smith, PhD, was appointed full professor. In December, Lauren Sponseller, MSOTLR/L, MEd, was appointed assistant professor and is the interim director of the Occupational Therapy program. News: The College is planning to debut Speech-Language Pathology degree programs in Fall 2014. The programs will feature an entry-level master’s degree in speech language, an entrylevel doctoral degree (SLPD) and post-doctoral certificate programs. Two new cohort off-campus programs began in the Spring semester in Minnesota and Wyoming. The programs’ curricula includes online classes with on-site hands-on classes. In conjunction with the respective Departments of Education, which are working to address the shortage of teachers for children with blindness and visual impairments in their states, the College utilizes adjuncts and faculty from Elkins Park to teach.
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Dr. Audrey Smith, Ms. Lynne Davis Dellinger and Ms. Jamie Maffit attended C-Sun, the annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities conference held in March in San Diego, CA. This conference showcases the premier technologies designed specifically for individuals with disabilities. Dr. Duane Geruschat, assistant professor, was a consultant on the recently unveiled Argus II, the first FDA approved artificial retina device. Invented by Second Sight Medical Products, a California based firm, the device is intended to replace the function of light-sensing cells in the retina destroyed by retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited degenerative disease that affects about 100,000 Americans. The College was invited to assist in a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy study taking place at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The study concerns Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a congenital form of blindness caused by mutations in a gene (RPE365) required for recycling vitamin A in the retina. Faculty members Dr. Duane Geruschat and Ms. Jamie Maffit assist in the evaluation of vision effect with study patients from around the world.
T h e A l u m n i Ma g a z i n e o f S a l u s U n i v e r s i t y
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SPRING 2013