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Chairperson – SHP Hearing and Speech at University of Kansas Medical Center

Chairperson – SHP Hearing and Speech

Department: SHP Hearing and Speech Education (HS)

Office of the Dean

Position Title: Chairperson – SHP Hearing and Speech

Job Family Group: Academic

Job Description Summary:

The University of Kansas Medical Center campus is located in Kansas City, KS and includes the Schools of Health Professions, Medicine, and Nursing, which together enroll about 4000 students. A new 171,000 square foot Health Education Building provides advanced technology classrooms and simulation labs. The Department of Hearing and Speech houses a dedicated audiology simulation lab equipped with state-of-the-art software and equipment to facilitate clinical-skill development among first- and second-year Au.D. students. The Department operates Audiology clinics and Speech-Language Pathology clinics on-site, in association with the University of Kansas Health System, and in the community. A new clinical vestibular clinic space opened in 2023, equipped with a comprehensive suite of diagnostic equipment including a rotary chair.

Job Description:

The successful candidate will be expected to:

Serve as Chair of the University of Kansas Medical Center’s http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-health-professions/hearing-and-speech.html. Serve as Program Director for the entry-level clinical doctorate in Audiology, and the KUMC contact for the https://caa.asha.org/ (CAA) and the https://www.asha.org/ (ASHA). Serve as co-Chair of the University of Kansas’ nationally ranked https://catalog.ku.edu/health-professions/audiology-speech-language-pathology/. Participate actively in the School of Health Professions leadership team. Teach graduate courses in the audiology clinical doctorate (Au.D.) and Ph.D. degree programs. Advise and mentor graduate students, including Ph.D. dissertations and Au.D. capstone research projects. Provide service to the department, school, university, and discipline at a level commensurate with the appointed rank.

 

Required Qualifications

Education: PhD degree in Audiology, Hearing Science, or related field.

Work Experience:

  • Experience in mentoring students, and/or junior faculty, and/or clinical researchers.
  • Experience with personnel management.
  • Experience with fiscal and budget management
  • Excellent written communication as evidenced by application materials.
  • Experience with teaching
  • Well-established research, scholarship, and clinical profiles as indicated by peer-reviewed publications, external funding, and experience in clinical practice
  • Record commensurate with the rank of Associate Professor or Professor with tenure in the School of Health Professions

 

Preferred Qualifications

Education/Certifications:

  • Clinical doctorate in Audiology (AUD).
  • Certificate of Clinical Competence in Audiology and is eligible for licensure in Kansas.

Work Experience:

  • Experience working in an interdisciplinary research center.
  • Experience working with donors or charitable organizations.
  • Successful prior experience with professional accreditation of academic health care programs.
  • An extramurally funded research program in the candidate’s area of expertise.
  • Regularly disseminated findings though peer-reviewed publications and presentations.
  • Commitment to developing a shared vision for research, teaching, and clinical missions of the Department and the School.

Skills:

  • Demonstrated leadership, communication, and negotiation skills.
  • Commitment to shared leadership and possessing interpersonal skills to facilitate the growth and development of faculty and staff within the department.
  • Exceptional collaborative capabilities.
  • Record of leadership and service in academic and/or clinical/professional settings.
  • Record of interdisciplinary collaboration with speech-language pathology and other health professions.

 

Responsibilities and Expectations

This individual will provide strategic leadership for the of Hearing and Speech Department in alignment with university mission, will be a thoughtful steward of Department resources, and actively will support professional growth of faculty.

Leadership and Institutional Commitment

  • Promote and support the vision, mission, and strategic objectives of the Department and of the School of Health Professions.
  • Advance a culture of academic and research excellence.
  • Maintain and enhance national external measures of reputation and excellence.
  • Actively and regularly participate in School and university leadership meetings and committees.
  • Provide effective leadership and mentoring for Department faculty and students.
  • Promote a positive and equitable workplace environment.

Research/Scholarship

  • Promote a Department and School culture that values and encourages discovery, scholarship, and innovation.
  • Participate in and/or lead research programs and scholarship projects as appropriate.
  • Promote recruitment and development of clinician-scientists.

Finance and Administration

  • Provide effective oversight of administrative and financial processes in the Department and associated clinics.
  • Oversee financial management and planning to maintain long-term fiscal stability of the Department.
  • Work with the School’s leadership to develop annual financial and programmatic goals.
  • Partner with key stakeholders to develop annual budgets that include sources of income and expenses.
  • Adhere to university and school financial, human resource, and administrative policies.
  • Effectively present information to faculty, academic and campus leaders, corporate leaders, professional colleagues, and public groups.

Required Documents

  • Resume/CV
  • Cover Letter

 

If selected as a final candidate for this position, you may be required to complete the Association of American of Universities Representations and Warranties document and sign a release of records that will allow the University of Kansas Medical Center to conduct a further background check with former employers. A copy of the Representations and Warranties document can be found https://www.kumc.edu/documents/hr/Representation%20and%20Warranties%20Document.pdf.

 

Comprehensive Benefits Package:

Coverage begins on day one for health, dental, and vision insurance and includes health expense accounts with generous employer contributions if the employee participates in a qualifying health plan. Employer-paid life insurance, long-term disability insurance, and various additional voluntary insurance plans are available. Paid time off, including vacation and sick, begins accruing upon hire, plus nine paid holidays. One paid discretionary day is available after six months of employment, and paid time off for bereavement, jury duty, military service, and parental leave is available after 12 months of employment. A retirement program with a generous employer contribution and additional voluntary retirement programs (457 or 403b) are available. https://www.kumc.edu/human-resources/benefits.html

 

Employee Type: Regular

Time Type: Full time

 

Application Instructions:

To learn more and apply online, please visit https://apptrkr.com/4496642 or go to https://careers.kumc.edu/ and search for position number JR005889.

Applications must be submitted directly through the KU Medical Center website to be considered for this position. Any applications submitted via email or this website will NOT be reviewed or considered.

 

About KU Medical Center:

The University of Kansas Medical Center’s mission is to educate exceptional health care professionals through a full range of undergraduate, graduate, professional, postdoctoral and continuing education programs in the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions. KU Medical Center also advances the health sciences through world-class research programs; provides compassionate and state-of-the-art patient care in an academic medical center environment; and works with communities in every Kansas county to improve the health of Kansans. Learn more at http://www.kumc.edu/.

Benefits:

KUMC offers a range of great benefits that support employees and eligible family members. Our health insurance benefits begin on hire date and KUMC offers other exciting benefits such as paid parental leave, generous employer retirement contributions and other resources to improve health and well-being. For more information, please visit https://www.kumc.edu/human-resources/benefits.html

KU is an EO/AAE. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, genetic information or protected Veteran status. http://policy.ku.edu/IOA/nondiscrimination

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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.