Volume 8 Issue 3 (pdf) - Andrew John Publishing Inc

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Articles from the Final
Seminars on Audition
By Marshall Chasin, Editor-in-Chief
For the past 28 years, Seminars on
Audition has been one of my
favourite hobbies. Joanne Deluzio and
I began coordinating this one day
conference back in 1986 and we just
had our final one earlier this spring –
the 28th annual Seminars on Audition.
The purpose of this seminar was to get
clinicians, hearing aid design engineers,
and researchers together in one room
and provide a speaker or speakers that
will set the milieu for discussion. In
many ways, much of what was learned
was during coffee breaks and from the
person sitting next to you. Although
there are a number of other continuing
education opportunities now such as
on-line CEUs, there was something
special about a face-to-face meeting
with people who would not normally
cross your paths. All proceeds went to
scholarships either at the University of
Western Ontario (Seminars on Audition
scholarship) or the Institute of
Biomaterials and Biomedical
Engineering at the University of
Toronto (Poul B. Madsen Scholarship).
The Seminars on Audition scholarship
allowed a student in their final year of
their master’s degree to attend an “extraordinary”
facility anywhere in North
America. Recipients over the years have
gone to the Canadian arctic to see how
hearing aid evaluations and follow-up
was performed over a 3000 km distance
by dog sled, and also to world class
pediatric facilities such as Boys Town in
Nebraska.
Previous speakers included EAG Shaw,
Edgar Villchur, Mahlon Burkhart, Lu
Beck, Ruth Bentler, Ken Berger, Elliott
Berger, Rich Tyler, Mead Killion,
William A. Cole, Richard Seewald,
Susan Scollie, Steve Armstrong, Michael
Valente, and Catherine Palmer, to just
name a few.
This last one was the final Seminars on
Audition. We did something a little bit
different this time around. Instead of
participants paying a registration fee, I
sought assistance from the hearing aid
manufacturers in Canada to cover all
costs. Funds were graciously provided
by:
GOLD SPONSORS
Bernafon Canada
GN Resound
Oticon Canada
SILVER SPONSORS
Phonak Canada
Siemens Canada
Widex Canada
Unitron Canada
Registration was therefore offered free
of charge to the first 100 people who
registered. The registrants were asked,
however, to make a voluntary
contribution to one of two scholarships
at Western University’s School of
Communication Sciences and Disorders
– the William A. Cole Scholarship or
the Richard C. Seewald Scholarship.
Contributions can still be given to these
scholarships by contacting Catherine
Dorais-Plesko at cdoraisp@uwo.ca.
Below are three of the summaries from
this last Seminars on Audition entitled
“Hearing Though the Ages” with
contributions from Dr. Susan Scollie,
Dr. Jo DeLuzio, and Marilyn Reed. As
you can probably guess from the areas
of specialty of these people, the seminar
started with young children and ended
with senior citizens and their unique
communication requirements.
Also found, following the above three
articles is a transcript from the
panel/discussion section from the
fourth Seminars On Audition between
Harry Levitt and Edgar Villchur from
1989, who were the speakers for that
meeting. Harry Levitt is a retired
professor from CUNY in New York and
is well known for his pioneering work
on digital hearing aids. Edgar Villchur
invented multi-band compression and
is the father of the air suspended
loudspeaker. Previous issues of the
Canadian Hearing Report have had
Founders of Our Profession columns on
both of these pioneers.
36 CANADIAN HEARING REPORT | REVUE CANADIENNE D’AUDITION