MSHA - Minnesota Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Member login

 Home About MSHA Join MSHA Contact MSHA  
Minnesota
Speech-Language-Hearing
Association
  MSHA Spring Convention 2010

April 23-24, 2010

Arrowwood Resort &
Conference Center
Alexandria, MN
Welcome
Press kit (help spread the word!)
Agenda & speakers
Silent auction
Sponsors & exhibitors
Continuing education
Location & lodging
Pricing & registration
Planning committee
Back to Conventions & Continuing Education
Please note:
This conference
is fragrance-free.

An interview with Jeanane M. Ferre, Ph.D.

A pre-convention scoop! An up-close conversation with a 2010 Spring Convention headline speaker.
MSHA asked: How did you become attracted to the field of audiology, and then how did you decide to specialize in the area of auditory processing disorders?
Dr. Ferre: I started out in a deaf education major in part because my father has no useable hearing in his left ear. But it just didn’t seem to fit. Then I took an audiology course at ISU (Illinois State University) and I was hooked. At the time, I was the only undergraduate student looking to move on to a master’s in audiology. Everyone else was going into speech-language pathology.
During graduate school at ISU (and I don’t want to tell you how long ago that was), our pediatric diagnostics class covered conductive, sensorineural, and central hearing problems. I took one look at the schematic of the central auditory nervous system and knew: “That’s where I want to be!” The course required papers for each section (the usual: 10 pages, double-spaced, etc.) and my CAP paper had about seven pages of information on the SSW Test and three pages of questions about CAP skills, testing, treatment, etc. When I told my professor that I needed answers to those CAP questions, he leaned back in his chair and said, “There aren’t any right now. What are you going to do about it?” I told him that since I really, really needed to know, I’d just have to get the answers myself.
CAP and I have had a sometimes frustrating but always fabulous nearly 30-year relationship since then. I find it beyond intriguing. Here’s a system with more than a million moving parts, capable of interpreting an almost infinite number of possibilities, all derived from a finite number of cues that can impact nearly every aspect of a person’s life—and you can hold it in the palm of your hand!
MSHA: What do you consider some of our most pressing ongoing challenges for clinicians who work with children and adults with (C)APD?
Dr. Ferre: The same challenges that we’ve had all along: finding and using reliable and valid assessment techniques, implementing cost-effective deficit-specific intervention, effectively conveying that information to and collaborating with parents, clients, and other professionals, and ensuring that our Aud and SLP graduate students have access to the highest quality clinical and academic preparation in CAP that we can give them.
MSHA: Across your experiences in our profession, what have been one or two of your most satisfying accomplishments in clinic, research, teaching, or professional service?
Dr. Ferre: May I do three?
  1. The first is easy: “my kids”—all those clients who have come through the door in need of assessment and/or treatment and knowing that I had a part in getting them the help they needed to enable them to reach their potential.
  2. Having had the opportunity to find some of the answers for which I was looking.
  3. At the risk of sounding immodest, being able to say that the status of “CAP” in our discipline is what it is today, in part, because of my clinical, teaching, research, and professional efforts.
MSHA: As an expert in your area, may we ask you to share some of your best advice for students who are just entering the field?
Dr. Ferre: Three items (and none of them are mine, but were given to me along the way and I’m happy to pass along):
  • “If we are able to see further than those who have gone before, it is only because we have been privileged to stand on the shoulders of greatness” - A. Einstein
  • “You don’t get to complain if you’re not willing to do the work” - my parents
  • “Just cuz it’s wrote down, don’t make it so” - Henry Fonda as Clay Spencer from the movie “Spencer’s Mountain”
Jeanane Ferre, Ph.D., is a consulting audiologist for Central Auditory Evaluation & Treatment. She will present a full-day session on “Understanding the ‘Process’ of Processing: Strategies for the Real World” at the MSHA 2010 Spring Convention, Friday, April 23, at the Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center in Alexandria, MN.

© 2010 Minnesota Speech-Language-Hearing Association