Interview with Fred Bess Ph.D., Chairman and Professor, Dept. of Hearing & Speech Sciences. Vanderbilt University
Bess: Hi Doug, thanks for the invitation.
AO/Beck: I'd like to learn a little about you, and then we can go ahead and discuss the upcoming ASHA conference.
Bess: Sure, that's fine.
AO/Beck: How long have you been at Vanderbilt, and what can you tell me about the department?
Bess: I've been here 26 years. We have about 70 to 75 graduate students in speech-language pathology and audiology. About 40 to 45 of them are getting their master's degrees and the rest are seeking their Ph.Ds. We typically have one or two post-docs in any given year. Probably just under half of all the graduate students are studying audiology.
AO/Beck: I probably ought to know this, but I am not clear on it. Would you please tell me a little about the CMU/Vanderbilt Au.D distance learning program?
Bess: The program was initiated because the Department of Veterans Administration, ASHA, AAA and several branches of the military put together a grant offering a financial incentive for a university to start an Au.D program via distance learning. We partnered with Central Michigan University (CMU) to design a program, we submitted it, and we received the grant. The program has been up and running for about 3 or 4 years now.
AO/Beck: And what is Vanderbilt's participation in the program at this time?
Bess: Dr. Konkle and I co-direct the program. So Vanderbilt has some input to the administration of the program. However, the program is physically run by CMU. Many of the faculty are from Vanderbilt. So it really is a nice collaboration and it's a win-win situation for both universities and the students. To begin with, CMU had the degree program in place and the funding requirements specified that the program had to offer the Au.D. At the time, Vanderbilt did not have an Au.D program, so the collaboration was mutually beneficial. Of course CMU has had distance learning programs out there for a long time. As you may know, I had the privilege of starting the audiology program at CMU in 1969 and I worked there for seven years. Hence, some significant ties exist between the two universities.
AO/Beck: What about the status of an Au.D program for Vanderbilt? Any news there?
Bess: We are working on a program proposal and we believe we can probably submit it in the next few months. I think it'll be approved and I anticipate starting the Au.D program in September, 2002.
AO/Beck: Do you anticipate discontinuing the master's program once the Au.D program is up and running?
Bess: Yes, absolutely.
AO/Beck: Dr. Bess, would you please tell me the names of the people on the audiology faculty at Vanderbilt?
Bess: Todd Ricketts Ph.D. heads up the hearing aid research. He is the key person for us on amplification. He works with Ben Hornsby and they are doing quite a bit of work regarding directional microphones at this point. David Gnewikow runs the hearing aid clinics at Bill Wilkerson. Terrey Penn coordinates the medical center services. Gene Bratt also is involved with amplification and he has done a lot of work in auditory disorders. Wes Grantham is a psychoacoustician and his primary interest is dynamic binaural processing. Anne Marie Tharpe and Dan Ashmead work in the areas of developmental hearing and behavioral assessment. Troy Hackett is in basic hearing science—he studies the functional organization of the auditory cortex. I still teach and do some clinical research, but these days I am primarily doing administration for the department.
AO/Beck: Very good. If you don't mind, I'd like to refocus this at this point to the ASHA convention. I believe you are the co-chair of the convention?
Bess: Yes, that's correct. The convention will be in New Orleans the week before Thanksgiving. The theme is 2001: A Professional Odyssey. And this is a brand new ASHA meeting format. We are actually going to have the audiology convention within the ASHA convention. So the SLPs and the audiologists will be separated for the most part. In effect, there will be an audiology meeting and an SLP meeting. The audiology program will kick off on Thursday with Harvey Dillon giving the Keynote Address recognizing Dennis Byrne for his enormous contributions to the profession. The other Keynotes will be delivered by Peter Dallos from Northwestern University on Friday morning. Dr. Dallos will address the topic of cochlear neurobiology. Arthur Boothroyd will deliver a Keynote address on Saturday morning. Dr. Boothroyd will discuss auditory management of children with hearing impairment. In addition there will be more than 60 instructional courses and short courses throughout the convention. We will also have poster sessions. Just about all areas within audiology will be represented including topics from ABR and electrophysiology to private practice and reimbursement issues. Participants will be able to choose from more than 200 audiology sessions dealing with the most important issues, trends, and advancements impacting the profession. So the bottom line is that the whole program has been totally redone. This is a brand new approach for us.
AO/Beck: How do you think the new format will impact registration numbers?
Bess: I anticipate that we'll be building the numbers. If I had to take a guess, I'd guess the attendance will increase from last year.
AO/Beck: How is ASHA going to handle the hotel issues?
Bess: The audiology meeting will have it's own hotel headquarters at the Wyndham. Moreover, there will be a number of social functions that will be primarily geared towards audiologists.
AO/Beck: Sounds like the ASHA convention is being reorganized to have a more focused audiology presence, and I agree with you - I think the attendance will increase as a result of those efforts. Thanks very much for spending a little time with me today Dr. Bess.
Bess: Thank you too Doug. I appreciate the chance to tell the AO audience about the new ASHA format and I think it'll be a really exciting convention.
Fred H. Bess, PhD
Director the National Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication and Professor of Audiology in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University
Fred H. Bess is Director the National Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication and Professor of Audiology in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He served as Chair of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences from 1978 until 2009. In 1969 he initiated and directed the Audiology Program at Central Michigan University, where he remained until joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 1976. He is the author of well over a hundred journal articles, book chapters, monographs and books dealing with hearing and hearing impairment. Also numbering over one hundred are professional papers presented at scholarly meetings throughout the country. He has been principal investigator or project director for several million dollars in privately and federally funded research, training and demonstration grants. In addition, Dr. Bess has served as chairperson for seven symposia, which attracted international participation. Dr. Bess holds membership in several professional and learned societies. In 1976 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and in 1984, named a Distinguished Alumnus by Carthage College. The New York League for the Hard of Hearing conferred on Dr. Bess the 1986 Harris M. Jonas Award in Audiology for contributions to the advancement of hearing health care and rehabilitation. In 1992, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation bestowed upon him their prestigious Frank R. Kleffner Clinical Career Award. He is a Charter Member of the American Academy of Audiology and served as its president in 1990. In 1999, Dr. Bess was awarded the Honor’s of the Association by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and, the Frederick S. Berg Educational Audiology Award by the Educational Audiology Association;in 2002, he was awarded the Honor’s of the Tennessee Association for Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists, for his contributions to children with communication disorders;and in 2003, he was awarded the Dorothy Dreyer Award for Volunteerism by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Dr. Bess’ recent research interests include minimal hearing loss in children, auditory characteristics of children with autism, and auditory rehabilitation for the elderly.