Campus News

Building a Strong Foundation from the Ground Up: The Importance of Mentorship in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology

Michelle Meyers June 20, 2024
(From Left to Right: Nicole Greene, AuD, John Parsons, AuD, and Barbara Moore, EdD. Photo Credit: Richard Carrasco.)

(From Left to Right: Nicole Greene, AuD, John Parsons, AuD, and Barbara Moore, EdD. Photo Credit: Richard Carrasco.)

Dr. Nicole Greene (Au.D.), Dr. John Parsons (Au.D.), and Dr. Barbara J. Moore (Ed.D.) all occupy positions of prestige and respect within the USC Caruso Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, with Greene and Parsons serving as the Co-Division Chiefs of Audiology and Moore serving as the Program Director for the Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology Program (MS-SLP). Each of these remarkable individuals, however, reached these professional milestones by traveling vastly different paths. Greene, for instance, notes that she had actually applied to college as a Radio-TV-Film major, but she says: “Once I got to Howard, during my first semester, I was introduced to the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department. Something clicked and I decided that speech pathology and audiology would be the career path for me.  I didn’t even know what a speech pathologist or an audiologist was before that fateful day. Once I had my first of only three undergraduate audiology classes, I knew I had found my calling.” Parsons, on the other hand, had developed an interest in the way that sound travels early on: “I grew up in Tampa, FL, and from a very young age, I loved taking apart speakers and amplifiers because it was too hot to do anything outside…I also worked in audio engineering and radio and regularly worked alongside musicians and other engineers with tinnitus and hearing loss. Learning about hearing conservation started as an act of self-preservation and later grew into a passion.” Finally, Moore was drawn to speech-language pathology because of “the intersection of language, cognition, research, medicine, and education,” and after working for over 30 years in school districts as well as teaching as an adjunct in special education and communication sciences and disorders at several local universities, she was hired to develop and run USC’s very own Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology Program.

Though Greene, Parsons, and Moore arrived where they are in their careers today through a variety of eclectic circumstances, all of them cite mentorship as a key part of the process. Greene credits her mentor in college, Dr. Noma Anderson (director of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department when Greene was at Howard), with inspiring Greene to become a speech pathologist: “It was she [Anderson] who lit that spark in me that made me change my major. She was so supportive, so encouraging, and she cared for all of her students DEEPLY. I will never forget how she led me to my calling.” This dedication to students and levity of spirit have served as a significant influence on Greene’s own approach to mentoring: “I strive to be just as supportive and encouraging, and I make sure to give [audiology students and new audiologists] the best of me at all times. I want my mentees to see that you can be real and honest and funny and still be a confident and competent clinician. As the saying goes, people never forget the way you made them feel, and I want every patient I encounter to feel cared for.”

Parsons’ approach to mentorship acts as a strong complement to that of Greene, as he focuses on maintaining a pragmatic, process-oriented attitude in which end goals are segmented into “manageable components to enable an easier approach to both research and patient care, ensuring a comprehensive and careful methodology broken down into accessible pieces.” He emphasizes that one of the reasons he loves working with students and clinicians is because “they will inevitably know so much more about something than I do…and I more often than not learn about ongoing research in our field that we can incorporate into our evidence-based practice.” Like Greene and Parsons, Moore aims to make sure that her mentorship practices are responsive to the needs and experience of her faculty, especially given that USC’s Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology Program is just getting off the ground. Moore mentions, for example: “Two of my faculty are new and others are more experienced, which means everyone had different needs in this environment of building. Some also want to conduct research, so we discuss opportunities within USC and in the profession. With all of them, we work together on our program development at our faculty meetings. The complexities of building a new graduate program cannot be understated, in terms of accreditation, curriculum, student matters, and building a culture for our program and our faculty.” Greene, Parsons, and Moore all agree that collaboration is essential, both among faculty and between faculty and students.

If everything goes according to plan, these mentorship best practices will hopefully lead to the expansion of opportunities for clinical care and education in the future, including hiring and training more audiologists, providing consistent and comprehensive care across a variety of settings that serve different patient populations, and continuing to build out the resources of the MS-SLP  Program as it goes through its Initial Accreditation Approval. As Greene so aptly describes it: “I would love to see the addition of more test booths and hearing healthcare rooms (for hearing aid and cochlear implant appointments) at our central clinic location and possibly at our current satellite locations as well. I would also like to see a satellite otology/audiology clinic in Orange County…space is a major issue with the rate at which our department is growing, making it difficult to accommodate all of our cochlear implant, hearing aid, and diagnostic patients. My goal for this coming year is to get our newly hired audiologists up and running and have less bouncing around to different locations for those audiologists who prefer to work at the same location every day. In the next few years, I would like to see an adult audiology externship program, and I’d like to see our audiologists providing additional tinnitus treatments such as Levo and Lenire. Most of all, I’d like to see the Audiology division running like a well-oiled machine, with happy audiologists who feel valued and love being part of our team.”