Higher demand creates new
doctoral degree
By Dave Stephens
Assistant
Campus Editor
More than 10 percent of the population is affected
by some type of hearing loss.
That number is expected to increase in the next
10 years as the baby boomer generation ages and the demand for audiologists
is expected to increase.
To help meet the demand, Purdue’s department
of audiology and speech sciences is offering a new doctorate degree.
The new Doctorate of Audiology is a program that
will allow students to do both research and gain clinical experience
by working at the Indiana University medical center in Indianapolis.
"We’re really excited that we’re
going to have a joint program with the department of Otolaryngology
at the medical center," said Anne Smith, department head of audiology
and speech sciences. "We’ll have medical center faculty who’ll
actually be teaching at Purdue."
Robert Novak, clinical professor of audiology and
speech sciences, said the decision to make the new doctorate program
comes, in part, from the decision by the National Speech-Language-Hearing
Association to change the requirements from a master's degree to a doctoral
degree.
"It is an applied clinical doctorate,"
said Novak. "This doctoral program will prepare students to be
technicians in the field."
Novak said the old program just admitted its last
master's class and will begin taking doctoral students in the fall of
2002.
The doctoral program will be very beneficial to
the state of Indiana, Novak said, because the need for audiologists
is very high in this state.
"We now have legislation in Indiana that created
a mandatory hearing screening of all newborn babies," said Novak.
"Because of this legislation, they were able to identify 350 babies
a year with hearing difficulties that were previously being missed."
The other two key areas where audiologists are
needed for work are with school-age kids who have hearing aids or cochlear
implants — devices that place programmed electrodes in the inner
ear to make the ear function properly — and with geriatric adults.
Students in the new doctoral program will also
be involved in the Engineering Projects in Community Service program,
which will enable them to get experience while helping others.
Novak said there is also the possibility for the
students to form a partnership with Purdue’s new nanotechnology
department to develop better hearing devices.
"The whole area of nanotechnology is really
exciting," said Novak, "and we are hoping we can integrate
that into the program."
"Our goal," she said, "is to basically
have a top-five program dedicated to the education of excellent clinical
researchers."
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