Two faculty members of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center are receiving awards from the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) this year, representing two of eight total recipients nationwide.
Anne Marie Tharpe, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences and associate director of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, is receiving the Marion Downs Award for Excellence in Pediatric Audiology. She has devoted her career to understanding and mitigating the impact of hearing loss in children. This is the inaugural awarding of this honor.
The award “recognizes audiologists for their exceptional contributions in pediatric audiology,” according to the AAA.
Tharpe noted, “Although recognition of one’s work is always appreciated, my greatest reward has been working with children with hearing loss and their families who are seeking to enhance their child’s ability to communicate. I have been fortunate to see tremendous improvement in what we, as pediatric audiologists, have to offer these families over the last three decades. Children who were once relegated to special schools, often living apart from their families, are now integrated in their neighborhood schools, sitting side-by-side with their normal hearing peers. I am honored to have had a small part in this important transition.”
D. Wesley Grantham, Ph.D., professor emeritus of Hearing and Speech Sciences, is receiving the Career Award in Hearing or Balance. He is an internationally known expert in the area of spatial hearing and binaural processing.
According to the AAA, the “award is given to a non-audiologist with a distinguished career in the field of audiology, hearing and/or balance over a period of at least 25 years.”
Grantham said, “Receiving this award is truly a great honor, especially coming from AAA, the world’s largest professional organization of audiologists. Although I am not an audiologist myself, I have enjoyed and greatly benefited from working closely with audiologists as both researchers and educators during my 35 years at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center. Seeing the list of previous recipients of this award makes me especially grateful and proud to be so honored.”
The awards will be presented at the AAA’s April conference in Phoenix.
“All of us at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center are exceptionally privileged to work with Drs. Tharpe and Grantham,” said Ron Eavey, M.D., the Guy M. Maness Professor and chair of Otolaryngology and director of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center. “They elevate the understanding of human communication to a higher level — both as professionals and as people. Each richly deserves such recognition for extraordinary efforts on behalf of our patients and society.”
