The following is a message from Bob Novak, convention co-chair for Audiology at The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). It is unedited and printed in its entirety.
The theme for the upcoming 2011 ASHA convention is "Beacons of Inspiration: Innovation to Action" and what better place in our country to be inspired that San Diego with its iconic "beacon," the Point Loma Lighthouse, guiding us to this outstanding convention venue! As with our Philadelphia convention, every effort will be made to deliver new and important information related to all aspects of audiology in a meaningful and substantive way.
As we will be in the western home of our country’s Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, it is one of our intentions for the entire convention to have a thread of our inspirational theme focused on the special cross-disciplinary assessment and rehabilitation needs of our returning war veterans with speech, language, hearing, and cognitive processing challenges secondary to their war injuries. We will be looking for inspiring discovery, learning, and practice stories regarding how our audiologists/hearing scientists, and speech language pathologists/scientists along with their occupational therapy, physical therapy, medical, nursing, and other rehabilitation team colleagues are successfully helping these men, women, and their families regain their communication abilities and their lives. We are very excited that Dr. Lucille Beck and Dr. Micaela Cornis-Popp have agreed to lead us off in this area with a premiere presentation on the collaborative work of audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and other members of rehabilitation teams working with veterans who are recovering from TBI and are being served in our VA Polytrauma Center System of Care across the country.
We have a wonderful group of topic coordinators which includes: Steve Kramer, Adult Hearing Assessment; John Ferraro, Hearing Science; Allan Diefendorf, Infant Hearing Assessment; Terry Chisolm, Intervention/Rehabilitation for Adults with Hearing Loss; Amy McConkey-Robbins, Intervention/Habilitation for Infants and Children with Hearing Loss; Frank Musiek, NeuroAudiology and (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder; with the revised name of the Frank’s topic committee, to include "NeuroAudiology…" we also will be encouraging topics related to Intraoperative monitoring as a growing area of audiology practice; Jorge Gonzalez, Vestibular/Balance Assessment and Rehabilitation; Sue Ellen Krause, Business, Management and Profession Issues; Gregg Givens, Research Issues Across the Discipline, and Robert Hanyak, California Audiology/Hearing Aid Dispensers’ license CEU coordinator. We will be creating an "audiology community" within the exhibit hall specifically to bring exhibitors with an audiology technology focus together to provide attendees with a meaningful hands-on instruction/experience with their newest innovations and facilitate conversations. We also are looking to expand our early evening offerings for all convention attendees, and particularly our local audiologists and speech-language pathologists who are not able to leave their practice during the day but would like to obtain continuing education credits through our "twilight" programming. We will have continuing education credits for certain sessions specifically approved for meeting the continuing education requirements for California Audiology/Hearing Aid Dispensing licensure.
Our goal is to inspire audiologists and hearing scientists with the programming that will be offered and in turn to be inspired by your stories of discovery, learning, and clinical service! I am asking you to consider submitting your work to one or more of our Topic Committees for consideration for inclusion in the 2011 ASHA Convention Program. Each of you in one way or another is a "beacon of inspiration" with inspirational research, clinical service, and/or educational stories to share. Our outstanding program committee is looking forward to receiving your submissions!! Your willingness to share your work is the key to the success of our Convention! See you in beautiful San Diego!
