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Assistant Professor in Audiology and Speech-language Pathology- Utah State University

By on August 22, 2023 in

Assistant Professor – Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology

Requisition ID: 2023-6798

# of Openings: 1

Location: US-UT-Logan

Category: Faculty

Position Type: Benefited Full-Time

Job Classification: Faculty

College: E Eccles Jones Coll of Ed & Hum Svs

Department: Communicative Disorders & Deaf Educ

Advertised Salary: Commensurate with education and experience, plus excellent benefits.

Overview

Utah State University’s https://cehs.usu.edu/comdde/ invites applications for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in Audiology and Speech-language Pathology beginning August 2024.

The emphasis of this position is research. The new hire will establish a thriving research program and pursue collaborations within and outside the department. Candidates with expertise in the area of early childhood hearing in Audiology are encouraged to apply. Opportunity will exist to collaborate with a new, tenure-track faculty hire in our Deaf Education Division with expertise in Listening and Spoken Language as well as to collaborate with other researchers in the College on issues of health equity. In addition to research, the new hire will teach courses in Speech-Language Pathology as well as offer institutional and professional services.

We value individual differences of every human and provide an equitable experience for our students, clients, staff and faculty members. Our aim is to foster an environment of belonging within our department where individual contributions are respected and supported while we work toward achievement of individual and collective goals. COMDDE seeks applicants who share this vision, wish to join a thriving department, and seek to help our students, colleagues, and communities flourish.

The new assistant professor will join a vital group of 44 faculty and staff in audiology, deaf education, and speech-language pathology. The position is located on USU’s main campus in Logan, Utah, a Carnegie-recognized R1 Institution of Higher Education. This position is not eligible for remote work. This position is a tenure-track, nine-month, academic-year appointment.

Review of applications will begin October 1, 2023 and will continue until the position is filled.

Inquiries may be directed to the search committee chair, Dr. Brittan Barker (435-797-0434; mailto:brittan.barker@usu.edu).

Responsibilities

  • Establish a thriving research program in Audiology, including successful external funding efforts and publishing research in top-tier scientific outlets;
  • Teach undergraduate and graduate courses as assigned;
  • Chair and serve on graduate student committees;
  • Teach and work with students from diverse populations;
  • Service to the department and institution, as well as provide national, state, and local service to the profession.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

  • Earned EdD or PhD by August 2024, with expertise in audiology and/or speech language pathology.
  • An emerging record of refereed journal publications that aligns with the assistant professor level.
  • Demonstrated potential for teaching courses at the university level.
  • A commitment to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in research, teaching, and mentoring.
  • Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Evidence of ability to establish a robust program of research that includes application to early childhood hearing.
  • Ability to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in alignment with audiology and speech-languagy pathology.
  • Evidence of ability to obtain extramural research funding through grant writing and/or public/private contracts.
  • Evidence of effective teaching in higher education.
  • Evidence of excellence in mentoring student researchers.

Required Documents

Along with the online application, please attach:

  • Curriculum vita to be uploaded at the beginning of your application in the Candidate Profile under \“Resume/CV\”
  • Contact information for five professional references to be entered in the Candidate Profile
  • One sample of scholarly work to be uploaded in the Candidate Profile under “Other Documents 1-5”
  • Copies of teaching evaluations for any university-level instruction to be uploaded in the Candidate Profile under “Other Documents 1-5”
  • Letter of application describing your qualifications for the position to be typed/pasted at the end of your application
  • Statement describing your areas of research and research agenda for the next five years to be typed/pasted at the end of your application
  • Statement of teaching philosophy to be typed/pasted at the end of your application

Please do not attach cover letter, research statement, or teaching philosophy; you will be instructed to copy and paste each in the application.

**Document size may not exceed 10 MB.**

Advertised Salary: Commensurate with education and experience, plus excellent benefits.

ADA: Employees typically work indoors and are protected from weather and/or contaminants, but not, necessarily, occasional temperature changes.

Department Highlights

The department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education (COMDDE) includes audiology, deaf education, and speech-language pathology. COMDDE offers undergraduate and graduate programs, including PhD opportunities in neuroscience and disability disciplines within the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. COMDDE provides real-world learning opportunities for students in the Sorenson Legacy Foundation Center for Clinical Excellence (Hearing and Balance clinic; Speech & Language clinc, Pediatric Audiology, and Cochlear Implant clinics) and in our early education program for deaf and hard of hearing children, Sound Beginings.

College Highlights

The Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services is home to eight departments and is committed to providing the best learning opportunities and educational research in the state of Utah. Our programs are strengthened by an on-campus elementary laboratory school and five stand-alone centers, including the Sorenson Legacy Foundation Center for Clinical Excellence. The college offers clinical services to the community across the human lifespan and provides students with real-world service and research opportunities.

Founded in 1888, Utah State University is Utah’s premier land-grant and space-grant university, with a strong commitment to excellence, access, and inclusion. USU serves approximately 27,500 students throughout the state at three residential campuses, eight statewide campuses, and 23 education centers. USU Online has served students from all 50 states and 55 countries for over 25 years, and USU Extension provides outreach and service to all counties in Utah.

As a land-grant university, USU engages communities and empowers people to lead successful lives of involvement, innovation, and impact. As an R1 research institution, USU provides a high-quality undergraduate and graduate education at an affordable price. Washington Monthly has consistently ranked USU in the top 10 among public universities for contribution to social mobility, research, and public service.

Utah State is committed to cultivating a https://www.usu.edu/dei/ where different perspectives, values, cultures, and identities are acknowledged, welcomed, and valued. We seek to recruit, hire, and retain people from all walks of life who will champion excellence in education, research, discovery, outreach, and service. We believe that promoting a strong sense of community and belonging empowers and engages all members of USU to thrive and be successful. https://www.usu.edu/about/ about USU.

The university provides a https://www.usu.edu/policies/385/385_Procedures_for_DCA.cfm to support careers for partners who are also seeking employment. Additionally, USU is committed to providing access and reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. To request a reasonable accommodation for a disability, contact the university’s ADA Coordinator in the Office of Human Resources at (435) 797-0122 or hr@usu.edu.

About the Region

U.S. News and World Report https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/utah#state-rankings for its strong economy, fiscal stability, education, and health care. Outstanding outdoor recreational opportunities abound throughout the state, including five national parks, 43 state parks and recreation areas, and 15 alpine ski resorts. The home of USU’s main campus, https://www.loganutah.org/, is a city of 54,000-plus people in a picturesque mountain valley 80 miles north of Salt Lake City. The Logan metro area https://milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Best-Performing%20Cities%20US%202022.pdf in the Milken Institute’s 2022 ranking for best-performing small cities in the nation.

*updated 7/2023

To apply, visit https://apptrkr.com/4507002

Notice of Non-discrimination

In its programs and activities, including in admissions and employment, Utah State University does not discriminate or tolerate discrimination, including harassment, based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by University policy, Title IX, or any other federal, state, or local law.

The following individuals have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the application of Title IX and its implementing regulations and/or USU’s non-discrimination policies:

Executive Director of the Office of Equity Matthew Pinner, discrimination@usu.edu, Distance Education Rm. 401, 435-797-1266

Title IX Coordinator Matthew Pinner, titleix@usu.edu, Distance Education Rm. 404, 435-797-1266

Mailing address: 5100 Old Main Hill, Logan, Ut 84322

For further information regarding non-discrimination, please visit https://equity.usu.edu/, or contact:

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, 800-421-3481, OCR@ed.gov

U.S. Department of Education, Denver Regional Office, 303-844-5695, OCR.Denver@ed.gov

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Hearing loss can significantly disrupt the ability of children to become mainstreamed in educational environments that emphasize spoken language as a primary means of communication. Similarly, adults who lose their hearing after communicating using spoken language have numerous challenges understanding speech and integrating into social situations. These challenges are particularly significant in noisy situations, where multiple sound sources often arrive at the ears from various directions. Intervention with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants (CIs) has proven to be highly successful for restoring some aspects of communication, including speech understanding and language acquisition. However, there is also typically a notable gap in outcomes relative to normal-hearing listeners. Importantly, auditory abilities operate in the context of how hearing integrates with other senses. Notably, the visual system is tightly couples to the auditory system. Vision is known to impact auditory perception and neural mechanisms in vision and audition are tightly coupled, thus, in order to understand how we hear and how CIs affect auditory perception we must consider the integrative effects across these senses.

We start with Rebecca Alexander, a compelling public speaker who has been living with Usher’s Syndrome, a genetic disorder found in tens of thousands of people, causing both deafness and blindness in humans. Ms. Alexander will be introduced by Dr. Jeffrey Holt, who studies gene therapy strategies for hearing restoration. The symposium then highlights the work of scientists working across these areas. Here we integrate psychophysics, clinical research, and biological approaches, aiming to gain a coherent understanding of how we might ultimately improve outcomes in patients. Drs. Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik are new to the ARO community, and will discuss neurobiology of the visual system as it relates to visual prostheses. Dr. Jennifer Groh’s work will then discuss multi-sensory processing and how it is that vision helps us hear. Having set the stage for thinking about the role of vision in a multisensory auditory world, we will hear from experts in the area of cochlear implants. Dr. René H Gifford will discuss recent work on electric-acoustic integration in children and adults, and Dr. Sharon Cushing will discuss her work as a clinician on 3-D auditory and vestibular effects. Dr. Matthew Winn will talk about cognitive load and listening effort using pupillometry, and we will end with Dr. Rob Shepherd’s discussion of current work and future possibilities involving biological treatments and neural prostheses. Together, these presentations are designed to provide a broad and interdisciplinary view of the impact of sensory restoration in hearing, vision and balance, and the potential for future approaches for improving the lives of patients.

Kirupa Suthakar, PhD - Dr Kirupa Suthakar is a postdoctoral fellow at NIH/NIDCD, having formerly trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School and doctoral student at Garvan Institute of Medical Research/UNSW Australia.  Kirupa's interest in the mind and particular fascination by how we are able to perceive the world around us led her to pursue a research career in auditory neuroscience.  To date, Kirupa's research has broadly focused on neurons within the auditory efferent circuit, which allow the brain to modulate incoming sound signals at the ear.  Kirupa is active member of the spARO community, serving as the Chair Elect for 2021.

 

 

I began studying the vestibular system during my dissertation research at the Università di Pavia with Professors Ivo Prigioni and GianCarlo Russo. I had two postdoctoral fellowships, first at the University of Rochester with Professor Christopher Holt and then at the University of Illinois at Chicago with Professors Jonathan Art and Jay Goldberg.

My research focuses on characterizing the biophysics of synaptic transmission between hair cells and primary afferents in the vestibular system. For many years an outstanding question in vestibular physiology was how the transduction current in the type I hair cell was sufficient, in the face of large conductances on at rest, to depolarize it to potentials necessary for conventional synaptic transmission with its unique afferent calyx.

In collaboration with Dr. Art, I overcame the technical challenges of simultaneously recording from type I hair cells and their enveloping calyx afferent to investigate this question. I was able to show that with depolarization of either hair cell or afferent, potassium ions accumulating in the cleft depolarize the synaptic partner. Conclusions from these studies are that due to the extended apposition between type I hair cell and its afferent, there are three modes of communication across the synapse. The slowest mode of transmission reflects the dynamic changes in potassium ion concentration in the cleft which follow the integral of the ongoing hair cell transduction current. The intermediate mode of transmission is indirectly a result of this potassium elevation which serves as the mechanism by which the hair cell potential is depolarized to levels necessary for calcium influx and the vesicle fusion typical of glutamatergic quanta. This increase in potassium concentration also depolarizes the afferent to potentials that allow the quantal EPSPs to trigger action potentials. The third and most rapid mode of transmission like the slow mode of transmission is bidirectional, and a current flowing out of either hair cell or afferent into the synaptic cleft will divide between a fraction flowing out into the bath, and a fraction flowing across the cleft into its synaptic partner.

The technical achievement of the dual electrode approach has enabled us to identify new facets of vestibular end organ synaptic physiology that in turn raise new questions and challenges for our field. I look forward with great excitement to the next chapter in my scientific story.

 

Charles C. Della Santina, PhD MD is a Professor of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he directs the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Implant Center and the Johns Hopkins Vestibular NeuroEngineering Laboratory.

As a practicing neurotologic surgeon, Dr. Della Santina specializes in treatment of middle ear, inner ear and auditory/vestibular nerve disorders. His clinical interests include restoration of hearing via cochlear implantation and management of patients who suffer from vestibular disorders, with a particular focus on helping individuals disabled by chronic postural instability and unsteady vision after bilateral loss of vestibular sensation. His laboratory’s research centers on basic and applied research supporting development of vestibular implants, which are medical devices intended to partially restore inner ear sensation of head movement. In addition to that work, his >90 publications include studies characterizing inner ear physiology and anatomy; describing novel clinical tests of vestibular function; and clarifying the effects of cochlear implantation, vestibular implantation, superior canal dehiscence syndrome and intratympanic gentamicin therapy on the inner ear and central nervous system.  Dr. Della Santina is also the founder and CEO/Chief Scientific Officer of Labyrinth Devices LLC, a company dedicated to bringing novel vestibular testing and implant technology into routine clinical care.

Andrew Griffith received his MD and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1992. He completed his general surgery internship and a residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Michigan in 1998. He also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Human Genetics as part of his training at the University of Michigan. In 1998, he joined the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) in the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). He served as a senior investigator, the chief of the Molecular Biology and Genetics Section, the chief of the Otolaryngology Branch, and the director of the DIR, as well as the deputy director for Intramural Clinical Research across the NIH Intramural Research Program. His research program identifies and characterizes molecular and cellular mechanisms of normal and disordered hearing and balance in humans and mouse models. Two primary interests of his program have been hearing loss associated with enlargement of the vestibular aqueduct, and the function of TMC genes and proteins. The latter work lead to the discovery that the deafness gene product TMC1 is a component of the hair cell sensory transduction channel. Since July of 2020, he has served as the Senior Associate Dean of Research and a Professor of Otolaryngology and Physiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Gwenaëlle S. G. Géléoc obtained a PhD in Sensory Neurobiology from the University of Sciences in Montpellier (France) in 1996. She performed part of her PhD training at the University of Sussex, UK where she characterized sensory transduction in vestibular hair cells and a performed a comparative study between vestibular and cochlear hair cells. Gwenaelle continued her training as an electrophysiologist at University College London studying outer hair cell motility and at Harvard Medical School studying modulation of mechanotransduction in vestibular hair cells. As an independent investigator at the University of Virginia, she expanded this work and characterized the developmental acquisition of sensory transduction in mouse vestibular hair cells, the developmental acquisition of voltage-sensitive conductances in vestibular hair cells and the tonotopic gradient in the acquisition of sensory transduction in the mouse cochlea. This work along with quantitative spatio-temporal studies performed on several hair cell mechanotransduction candidates lead her to TMC1 and 2 and long-term collaborations with Andrew Griffith and Jeff Holt. Dr. Géléoc is currently Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology, at Boston Children’s Hospital where she continues to study molecular players involved in the development and function of hair cells of the inner ear and develops new therapies for the treatment of deafness and balance, with a particular focus on Usher syndrome.

Jeff Holt earned a doctorate from the Department of Physiology at the University of Rochester in 1995 for his studies of inward rectifier potassium channels in saccular hair cells.  He went on to a post-doctoral position in the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he characterized sensory transduction and adaptation in hair cells and developed a viral vector system to transfect cultured hair cells.  Dr. Holt’s first faculty position was in the Neuroscience Department at the University of Virginia.  In 2011 the lab moved to Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Holt is currently a Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology and Neurology in the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center.  Dr. Holt and his team have been studying sensory transduction in auditory and vestibular hair cells over the past 20 years, with particular focus on TMC1 and TMC2 over the past 12 years.  This work lead to the discovery that TMC1 forms the hair cell transduction channel.  His work also focuses on development gene therapy strategies for genetic hearing loss.​