Hearing & Speech Month at UMaine Includes Hearing Screenings, Reading Aloud
Contact: Lorriann Orr, (207) 581-2007; Amy Booth, (207) 581-2011; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
(Ed. note: April 28 event offers free hearing tests for adults, free hearing aid batteries and a look at new devices to assist hearing impaired people. Last year 100 or more people showed up for hearing screening and hearing aid cleaning.)
ORONO — UMaine will offer something for young and old, as the faculty and students of Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and its Conley Speech, Language and Hearing Center observe Better Hearing and Speech Month.
The department is sponsoring two events, a reading on April 18 at the UMaine Bookstore and a Hearing Expo April 28 at the Conley Center. The purpose of both events is to provide free educational services for members of the public and also to highlight the services offered at the Conley Speech, Language and Hearing Center in Dunn Hall, according to Susan K. Riley, clinical director.
The Conley Center offers speech-language therapy and diagnostic evaluation services in the speech-language clinic and features specialty clinics in family-based treatment and stuttering. The audiology clinic offers recommendations for improving communication, hearing screenings, comprehensive audiologic evaluations, hearing aid options, assistive listening devices and comprehensive hearing aid services.
Speech-language services at the center are provided by both faculty and graduate students who are supervised by faculty members in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and who hold Certificates of Clinical Competence in either speech-language pathology or audiology from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and state of Maine licensure. The audiologist provides all services in the audiology clinic and supervises graduate students obtaining clinical hours in audiology.
The bookstore event at 1 p.m. April 18 will feature Maine coast author and speech-language pathologist Davene Fahy, who will read from her children’s book “Charlie Who Couldn’t Say His Name.” Parents, teachers, children, physicians and speech-language pathologists are among those who might be interested in the afternoon program, according to Lorriann Orr, staff speech-language pathologist and lecturer in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
The CSD department’s annual Hearing Expo at the Conley Center’s audiology clinic in Dunn Hall on April 28 from 5:30-8:30 p.m. will offer free hearing screenings for adults. In addition, the public will see an array of the latest in hearing aids and equipment for the hearing-impaired, including alarm clocks that shake your pillow instead of ringing or buzzing, lamps that flash when the doorbell or telephone rings and a wristwatch that vibrates at a specified time.
Exhibits at the Hearing Expo will include, in addition to free hearing screenings, free hearing aid cleaning and testing, and free hearing aid batteries, says Amy Booth, staff audiologist and lecturer in the department.
“It may not be a hearing aid that a person needs, but something else that can help them,” Booth says, referring to sound-activated lights, clocks that vibrant and other hearing-assistive devices. “Some of these devices are becoming more and more mainstream. Such devices are becoming readily available and affordable.”
Two other visitor stations will provide information on finding better ways of communicating with people with hearing loss and on understanding safe and unsafe noise limits.
Booth asks that people who intend to come to call ahead for planning and scheduling purposes. The audiology clinic can be reached at 581-2009.
“Everyone in the community with an interest with speech-language and communication disorders is invited to these events,” Riley says. At both the April 18 event at the bookstore and the Hearing Expo at the Conley Center, a table will be set up with literature on prevention of speech-language disorders, and there will be an opportunity to learn about communication disorders, treatment and prevention as well as to meet the faculty and see the center.
For more information or to schedule an appointment for any of the clinics at the Conley Center, please contact the clinic at 581-2006.