Audiology 2012 Faculty
View the Audiology 2012 Disclosures webpage for information on speakers' financial and non-financial interests relevant to the content of their presentations.
Karen Anderson, PhD, CCC-A, has worked in clinical, public school and state-level (EHDI) settings to address the needs of children with hearing loss. She is Director of Supporting Success for Children with Hearing Loss, a source of resources for hearing professionals and parents of children with hearing loss, including the availability of 1:1 consultation and a growing number of practical webcasts. Her most recent accomplishments include co-authoring the publication of Building Skills for School Success in the Fast-Paced Classroom: Optimizing Achievement for Students with Hearing Loss from Butte Publishing, which addresses integration of aural rehabilitation activities into the common core standards and the revision of the widely-used Listening Instrument For Education-Revised (LIFE-R) into an e-version. Karen is the author of the Screening Instrument For Targeting Educational Risk (SIFTER) in children with hearing loss, the Secondary SIFTER, and the Early Listening Function (ELF), and is co-author of the Preschool SIFTER, Children's Home Inventory of Listening Difficulties (CHILD), and the guidance document Relationship of Hearing Loss to Listening and Learning Needs. She presents widely both nationally and internationally, and has received multiple awards for her contributions to the field. Her special interests include self-advocacy skill development and functional monitoring of student classroom performance.
Teri James Bellis, PhD, CCC-A, is author of When the Brain Can't Hear: Unraveling the Mystery of Auditory Processing Disorder (2002, Pocket Books). Dr. Bellis has been involved in the development, management, and implementation of audiologic and neurodiagnostic programs in clinical and educational settings for the past 28 years, including multimodality evoked potentials programs and central auditory processing service delivery programs. She received her doctorate in audiology with specialty certification in language and cognition from Northwestern University. An internationally recognized expert in (C)APD, she has lectured and published widely on the subject of central auditory processing assessment and treatment. Dr. Bellis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of South Dakota and is a Fellow of ASHA. The second edition of her bestselling textbook: Assessment and Management of Central Auditory Processing Disorders in the Educational Setting: From Science to Practice is available from Plural Publishing.
Linda J. Hood, CCC-A, is a professor in the department of hearing and speech sciences and associate director for research at the National Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication at Vanderbilt University. She also is an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. Dr. Hood received a master's degree in audiology from Kent State University and a PhD in hearing science from the University of Maryland. She completed an NIH post-doctoral fellowship and was a faculty member at the Kresge Hearing Research Laboratory, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans for over 20 years. Research, publications, and clinical interests include auditory physiologic responses, efferent auditory function, hereditary hearing loss, auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony, central auditory processing, development of hearing, aging of the auditory system, cochlear implants, and comparative hearing studies. In addition to research and teaching, Dr. Hood has participated in review and working groups of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, is a past president of the American Academy of Audiology, past trustee of the American Academy of Audiology Foundation, and a current member of Boards of the American Auditory Society and the International Society of Audiology.
Cheryl DeConde Johnson, EdD, is self-employed as a consultant for educational audiology and deaf education specializing in program evaluation and development and state systems through her practice, The ADEvantage. She was a consultant with the Colorado Department of Education with responsibilities that included audiology, deaf education, educational interpreting, and special edeucation monitoring from 1998 until her state retirement in 2006. Cheryl has also worked as an educational audiologist, early intervention provider, hearing specialist, and deaf education program supervisor. She holds adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, the University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Arizona.
Dr. Johnson's special interests include promoting outcomes comparable to hearing peers for all children who are deaf and hard of hearing, communication access, and family involvement. Drawing upon her own experiences raising a daughter with hearing loss, she enjoys assisting families as they face similar issues and challenges. She is a co-author of the Educational Audiology Handbook, as well as numerous other articles and book chapters. She has frequently presented nationally and internationally. Dr. Johnson has received numerous awards and recognitions for her work.
Dawna E. Lewis, PhD, CCC-A, received her MA from the University of Tennessee and her PhD from the University of Nebraska. She currently works as a staff scientist at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Lewis has presented and published on topics involving pediatric audiology/amplification and assistive listening devices, including FM systems. She received the Editor's Award from the American Journal of Audiology for two 1994 articles on assistive technology in the classroom. Dr. Lewis has served on the steering committee for ASHA Special Interest Group 9, Hearing and Hearing Disorders in Childhood, the Joint Committee of ASHA and the Council of Education of the Deaf, and the Research and Creative Endeavors Committee of EAA. She also has served as an associate editor for Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Currently, Dr. Lewis serves on the ASHA Publications Board, the Editorial Board of Seminars in Hearing, and the AAA Task Force on Guidelines for Remote Microphone Hearing Assistance Technology. Her present research examines minimal hearing loss and functional auditory skills in children.
Erin C. Schafer, PhD, CCC-A, is an associate professor in the department of speech and hearing sciences at the University of North Texas where she teaches graduate courses in the areas of assessment, rehabilitation, habilitation of adults and children with hearing loss, and she serves as an educational audiology consultant for local school districts. Her current research focuses on strategies to enhance communication abilities of children and adults who have auditory disorders, hearing loss, hearing aids, and cochlear implants.
Dr. Schafer received her BS degree in communication sciences from Texas Woman's University, and her MS and PhD degrees in audiology from The University of Texas at Dallas. She serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Educational Audiology, and is past president of the Scott Haug Audiology Foundation.
Jane B. Seaton, MS, CCC-A/SLP, is a private consultant in audiology and communication disorders who has spent more than 40 years working in a variety of settings with families and children who have experienced hearing loss. She developed and administered a model regional educational program for students who are deaf and hard of hearing and continues to serve as parent advisor, mentor, and consultant for early intervention programs for infants and toddlers with sensory disabilities. A co-author of The Educational Audiology Handbook, now in its second edition, Jane is a stakeholder in the Georgia EHDI program and a partner in Georgia Pathway to Language and Literacy, an online project targeting improved literacy for students who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Donna F. Smiley, PhD, CCC-A, is an educational audiologist and the coordinator for the Educational Audiology/Speech Pathology Resources for Schools (EARS) Program at Arkansas Children's Hospital. Dr. Smiley has practiced audiology in the areas of pediatrics and school based audiology for over 20 years. She has provided professional development related to school based audiology services as well as conducted research in the area. Dr. Smiley recently co-authored the textbook, School-Based Audiology (Plural Publishing). Dr. Smiley received a bachelor of science degree in communication disorders from Henderson State University, a master of science degree in audiology from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a PhD in hearing science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Carrie Spangler, AuD, CCC-A, is an educational audiologist for Stark County ESC. She has been an educational audiologist for 12 years. Carrie graduated from the University of Akron with a masters in audiology and Arizona School of Health Sciences with a doctorate of audiology. Carrie is one of the developers of the GAP program. She has presented nationally on this topic and recently had her first professional publication about counseling teens on self-advocacy. In addition to her professional expertise, she also brings a personal perspective to the profession. Carrie was born with a severe to profound hearing loss and has worn hearing aids from a young age. At Stark County she organizes a teen group of students who are deaf and hard of hearing to develop self-advocacy and personal responsibility skills regarding their hearing loss. As a consumer, she experiences communication access issues on a daily basis and lends authenticity to this presentation by incorporating these personal experiences.
Linda M. Thibodeau, CCC-A/SLP, is a professor at The University of Texas at Dallas since 1996 where she is director of the Pediatric Aural Habilitation Training Specialist Project. Prior to that she worked at The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas Speech and Hearing Institute, in otolaryngology clinics, and in the public schools. She teaches in the areas of amplification and pediatric and adult auditory rehabilitation. Her research at the Advanced Hearing Research Center of the Callier Center for Communication Disorders involves evaluation of the speech perception of listeners with hearing loss and auditory processing problems as well as evaluation of amplification systems and hearing assistance technology to help those persons. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, Deafness Research Foundation, National Organization of Hearing Research, and the Office of Special Education for her research. Her professional interests include serving as the co-chair of the ANSI committee to develop a standard for the Electroacoustic Evaluation of ALDs, member of the AAA Task Force on Guidelines for Fitting Remote Microphone Technology, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, and associate editor for the American Journal of Audiology.
Emily A. Tobey, PhD, CCC-SLP, is the Nelle C. Johnston Chair in Communication Disorders in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Tobey received her undergraduate and masters degree in speech-language pathology from New Mexico State University and Louisiana State University Medical Center. Her doctorate in speech science was obtained at the City University of New York in 1981. Dr. Tobey has served as a Distinguished Lecturer-in-Residence, Department of Communication Sciences, Texas Woman's University, and as a visiting research scholar at the Australian Bionic Ear and Hearing Research Institute of the University of Melbourne, the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Center of Nottingham, England, and the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Montpellier, France. She was named the Distinguished Academy Scientist by the Louisiana Academy of Sciences and Fellow of ASHA and Acoustical Society of America. In 2001, she was named The University of Texas at Dallas Polykarp Kusch Lecturer: the highest honor an individual faculty member can receive from the University. Dr. Tobey recently received the Honors of ASHA.
Fern Tsien, PhD, received her BS in biology and BA in studio art from Tulane University in New Orleans. She received her PhD degree from the Hayward Genetics Center at the Tulane University School of Medicine. At Tulane she was the supervisor of the Molecular Cytogenetics Laboratory. Dr. Tsien has been a faculty member in the department of genetics at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans since January of 2003. She is involved in genetics education at a variety of levels, teaching audiology students, pathology residents, post-doctoral fellows, medical students, graduate students, undergraduates, elementary, middle and high school students, and teachers.
Dr. Tsien is the genetics course director for the audiology doctoral program as part of the department of communication disorders in the LSUHSC School of Allied Health Professions in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her current research interests include chromosome and telomere instability, DNA methylation and epigenetic mechanisms, and atypical chromosome rearrangements of the Down syndrome critical region. She is currently evaluating the clinical correlation between genetics, audiology, and speech pathology in the improved quality of life of Down syndrome patients.
Jace A. Wolfe, PhD, CCC-A, is the director of audiology at the Hearts for Hearing Foundation and an adjunct assistant professor in the audiology department at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Salus University. Previously, Dr. Wolfe served as the editor for ASHA's Special Interest Group 9, and is a co-editor for the Core Clinical Concept Series on cochlear implants by Plural Publishing, Inc. Dr. Wolfe is a member of the Better Hearing Institute's pediatric advisory board, as well as a member of the audiology advisory boards for both Cochlear Americas and the Phonak Hearing Aid Company. Dr. Wolfe is a reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals, and also serves on the editorial board of The Hearing Journal where he co-authors "Small Talk," a periodic column. Dr. Wolfe has authored numerous articles in professional peer-reviewed and trade journals, including the textbook Programming Cochlear Implants. Dr. Wolfe's areas of interests are pediatric amplification and cochlear implantation, personal FM systems, and signal processing for children. He provides clinical services for children and adults with hearing loss and is actively engaged in research pertaining to hearing aids, cochlear implants, and personal FM systems.