Westminster, CO – April 7, 2014 - The National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA) has announced the members of its 2014 Executive Council.
“The new NHCA Executive Council represents the diversity of our membership and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the practice of hearing loss prevention,” said NHCA incoming President Beth Cooper. “Our members are actively engaged or currently studying in fields such as audiology, occupational health nursing, industrial hygiene, and noise control engineering and come from all sectors of industry, academia, government and armed forces, equipment manufacturers, and providers of audiometric monitoring services.”
Organized in 1976, the NHCA has grown to a robust organization with approximately 260 members who are passionate about the prevention of hearing loss due to noise and environmental factors, Cooper noted.
The new Executive Council conducted its first meeting in March at the NHCA’s 39th Annual Hearing Conservation Conference, held in Las Vegas. The members of the Council are listed below, along with their brief biographies.
- President - Beth Cooper, PE, INCE, Bd. Cert, Fellow INCE. Beth Cooper is an acoustical engineer and hearing conservationist with more than 30 years of experience in acoustics, noise control, hearing loss prevention, and occupational health. Her accomplishments include the design, construction, and management of several acoustical facilities and major industrial noise control projects and the development of unique multimedia educational resources and applications that energize occupational hearing conservation programs. She currently serves as a subject matter expert, providing technical support and training for the occupational health and engineering communities at NASA’s fifteen field centers.
- President Elect - Kristy Casto, Ph.D., CCC-A. Kristen (Kristy) Casto is an active-duty Army audiologist currently assigned to the Office of the Army Surgeon General where she serves as deputy audiology and hearing conservation consultant to the Army Surgeon General. LTC Casto earned an Au.D. from Central Michigan University and a Ph.D. in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Tech. LTC Casto is certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), is a Fellow of the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) and is also a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Military Audiology Association.
- Immediate Past President - Jennifer Tufts, Ph.D., CCC-A. Jennifer Tufts is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Connecticut. She holds a B.A. in music and mathematics from Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in audiology from Penn State University. She holds the Clinical Certificate of Competence in audiology from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and is currently licensed to practice audiology in Connecticut.
- Secretary/Treasurer - Nancy Wojcik, MS. Nancy is an epidemiologist in the Occupational & Public Health Division of ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc., located in Annandale, NJ. Nancy has over 25 years of experience, earned an M.S. degree from Seton Hall University, and has published on epidemiological methods for cohort mortality studies. She manages the company’s employee health surveillance system and has conducted cohort mortality and cancer incidence studies of North American petrochemical workers.
- Director of Education - Marjorie McCullagh, Ph.D., RN, PHCNS-BC, COHN-S. Marjorie McCullagh has worked in educator positions for more than 30 years, currently serving as nurse-educator and researcher at the University of Michigan. Dr. McCullagh’s program of research focuses on prevention of NIHL among farm operators, particularly through use of hearing protection devices.
- Director of Marketing and Public Relations - Marvin “Joel” Jennings, M.S., CCC-A. Joel is on active duty with the US Army, where he most recently served as the Hearing Program Manager for Fort Bliss, Texas. He holds degrees from the University of Texas, and is currently pursuing a Master’s of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to serving on active duty, Joel worked in many settings in the hearing industry, including working for a major hearing aid company. He currently serves as President on the executive board of the Military Audiology Association, holds a certificate of Clinical Competence form the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Audiology.
- Director of Membership - Cheryl Nadeau, M.Ed., F-AAA, CPS/A. Cheryl Nadeau is the Senior Occupational Audiologist for Workplace Integra, Inc., Greensboro, NC. She is a Certified Professional Supervisor of the Audiometric Program (CPS/A), a Certified Course Director for the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC), Board Certified in Audiology by The American Board of Audiology and a member of the American Academy of Audiologists (AAA). Cheryl holds a B.S.Ed. in Communication Sciences and Disorders and a M.Ed. in Audiology from the University of Georgia, Athens. She is in the process of obtaining her Doctor of Audiology degree at A.T. Still University, Arizona School of Health Sciences.
- Director of Communications - Cory Portnuff, Au.D., Ph.D. Dr. Cory Portnuff is a clinical audiologist in Denver with an Au.D. (Doctor of Audiology) and a Ph.D. in Hearing Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research focuses on noise-induced hearing loss in children, with a particular emphasis in understanding music-induced hearing loss and MP3 players using health belief modeling. Dr. Portnuff is also the President of the H.E.A.R. Project, a Colorado non-profit organization that provides support for families of children with hearing loss.
- Member Delegate - Marilyn Morgan, RN, COHC. Marilyn began professional services in occupational hearing conservation in 2010 as a hearing conservationist. The employer, Take Care Health Systems, provides the occupational health services for the Golden, CO site. Her professional involvement includes past board memberships in nursing organizations and educational organizations on both the local and state levels. She has provided volunteer and participant services for both NHCA and CAOHC.
- Member Delegate - Kara Cave. CPT Kara Cave is currently the Chief of the Fort Campbell, KY Hearing Program. Her previous assignments include: Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C; Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland; 10th Combat Support Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq; and Fort Bliss, Texas. She received her B.A. from Boston College in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Audiology from James Madison University in 2005.
- PSP Member Delegate - Sandra MacLean-Uberuaga, MA, F-AAA, CSP/A. Sandra MacLean Uberuaga has a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Washington in Speech and Hearing Sciences and a Master’s in Audiology and Pathology. Sandra is president Alaska Occupational Audiology & Health Services, Inc., as well as Washington Audiology Services. She is a six time recipient of the NHCA golden lobe award. She is a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, American Society of Safety Engineers, the Acoustical Society of America as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Audiology. She has been an active course director for the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC) and is a Professional Supervisor by CAOHC.
- Commercial Member Delegate - Scott Lake, MSE, BMSE, GMI. Scott Lake is the Engineering Projects Manager at Westone Laboratories, Inc. located in Colorado Springs, CO. He has spent most of his 20+ year professional career in the area of noise and vibration control in the automotive industry; with specialization in the study of Sound Quality where he was a regularly invited speaker to the biannual Noise & Vibration Conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers. He currently has responsibilities in product definition, design and development for Westone Laboratories’ Hearing Protection Device Products.
- Associate Member Delegate: David Stern, C-OHC – David Stern has worked in the hearing conservation field since 1995 in a variety of positions from Tech to Lead Tech to Operations manager and is experienced in testing, training, noise surveys, custom HPD’s, otoacoustic emissions and more He now works for Boeing as a Health Services Administrator in the Pre-Employment Medical Dept and continue to support Boeing’s Hearing Conservation Program by being a member of the Hearing Conservation Program Steering Committee.
About the National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA)
The mission of the NHCA is to prevent hearing loss due to noise and other environmental factors in all sectors of society. NHCA's membership includes audiologists, researchers, industrial hygienists, physicians and occupational health nurses, educators, professional service organizations, safety professionals, engineers, audio professionals, students, and others who have dedicated their work to the advancement of hearing loss prevention. For more information, visit https://www.hearingconservation.org.
