empowEar Audiology
Communication is connecting. Join Dr. Carrie Spangler, a passionate audiologist with a personal hearing journey, as she interviews guests who are navigating their own professional or personal journey in the deaf/hard of hearing world. If you want to be empowEARed or just want to hear some great hearing and listening advice, this podcast is for you!
empowEar Audiology
Episode 77: Raising the Bar: The CH-EdAud in Educational Audiology
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In this special episode of the EmpowEAR Audiology Podcast, host Dr. Carrie Spangler honors Educational Audiology Awareness Week 2025 with notable guests in the educational audiology field: Dr. Cheryl DeConde Johnson and Dr. Kristin Samuelson.
Cheryl and Kristin share their professional journeys and the collective advocacy behind the Certificate Holder in Educational Audiology (CH-EdAud) program, developed through the collaboration of the American Board of Audiology and the Educational Audiology Association. This program strengthens professional identity, raises awareness of the vital role educational audiologists play in schools, and ensures better outcomes for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
From program development and system change to direct school-based support, our guests highlight the power of educational audiology to make a difference. Whether you’re a seasoned audiologist, a new educational audiologist, or thinking about making a switch, this episode is for you!
For more information about Dr. Carrie Spangler- check out her Linktree at https://linktr.ee/carrie.spangler.
For transcripts of this episode- visit the podcast website at: https://empowearaudiology.buzzsprout.com
Welcome to episode 77 of the empowEAR Audiology Podcast with Dr. Carrie Spangler. Welcome to another episode of the Empower Ear Audiology Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carrie Spangler, and I am especially excited about today's conversation because it coincides with Educational Audiology Awareness Week. Educational Audiology Awareness Week is October 20th through the 24th, 2025, and seeks to promote advocacy for the educational audiology profession as well as professional recognition. If you want, visit edaud.org for more information, resources, and ways to promote this week. This week is also a perfect time to showcase the certificate holder in educational audiology program. And I am joined with two remarkable leaders in our field, Dr. Cheryl DeConde Johnson and Dr. Kristen Samuelson. Dr. Cheryl DeConde-Johnson is the founder of Advanege and a national consultant in deaf education and educational audiology. She's also a professor, the co-founder of Hands and Voices, and the co-author of the Educational Audiology Handbook in its fourth edition. And I also have Dr. Kristen Samuelson with me, who has worked across private practice, medical settings, and higher education, and now serves as an educational audiologist for a large school district in Arizona. She brings a wealth of experience, both supporting students and adults of all ages. Together, they've been very instrumental in shaping the Certificate Holder in Educational Audiology Programs, which is a groundbreaking collaboration between the American Board of Audiology and Educational Audiology Association. The certificate not only strengthens our profession, identity, and expertise, but also raises awareness of the unique contribution that educational audiologists bring to the schools and communities. So let's jump in. Welcome, Cheryl and Kristen. Well, we're excited to have this conversation. Yay. Well, I'm excited to have it as well. I thought I would ask Cheryl first, and we're just gonna jump right in. If you can share just a little bit about the inspiration behind developing the certificate holder and educational audiology, the program.
Cheryl:So if you can believe it, back in about 2000, I was the very first chair of the American Board of Audiology when we first launched this entire program. And at that time, my dream was to have certification in a specialty area of educational audiology. And we actually did surveys with our membership, and there was support then. We've actually done, I think, three surveys over the last 20 years or so. But it's a big undertaking. We really had to look at what certification meant and what the resources were needed to actually put together a certification program with assessments and the programs that initially came out of the ABA and cochlear implant certification, pediatric audiology certification, et cetera, versus a certificate. And so we just did not have the resources at the time to do a real certification program. So it kind of was on the back burner. We revisited it, I think, like around 2010, 2012, kind of ended up in the same place. And then this past fall, the fall of 2024, I should back up, we actually did another membership survey, I think in about 2022, 2023. And again, there was strong support for moving forward with some kind of program. And we get again explored certification and the costs involved versus a certificate and kind of landed on a certificate. So one of my colleagues in Colorado is Sandy Gabbard, who's the director of the Marion Downs Center. And she and I were camping with our families. And I told her about this little project that we were working on through EAA, and she says, Oh my gosh, Cheryl, ABA now has certificate programs. She, I think at the time, was the outgoing chair for ABA. She says, you need to contact Andrew Safford at ABA and figure out how you're going to make this certificate happen. And we were able to accomplish this in less than a year, I would say in nine months, because of the fact that we had the right people on the bus. We didn't have to go after content because we could use the educational audiology handbook as content. We had great support both from the board at ABA and from the EAA board. And man, it just fell into place. And so I am very excited. You know, there's a right time to do everything, and we found the right time and made it happen, and we're very excited. And Kristen was a big part of that as a supporter. She was the ABA chair as an educational audiologist when this initiative started off last fall. So I don't know, Kristen, if you want to add anything about that, I'd love to hear what you thought.
Kristen:Yeah, I'll tell you, by the timing, like you said, Cheryl, couldn't have been more perfect. One thing that I'm just gonna add, just for people who I found as the chair of the ABA, that a lot of audiologists, especially the newer audiologists, don't understand what the difference is between a certificate and a certification. And so I find myself explaining that a lot, and especially to my students I work with. And so I'll just remind people that a certification makes the assumption that you've already got the expertise and particular subspecials. In this case, educational audiology, And what you learned and then you learn the certificate. So in this case, this is particularly interesting to me because I was after having been an audiologist for a long time, I was making a career through educational ideology, and I found that it was a whole new set of vocabulary and skills. And so I kind of three years ago when I jumped into this role, I sure would have liked to have already had this certificate program, but it was a great time for me to jump on board. And when the EAA came forward and opposed it to ABA board, we were ready to go. They had the content and we had the collective. So it was like a great marriage between the two groups.
Carrie:Yeah. Well, Cheryl, persistence and determination really does pay off in the long run. And I know you and I have known each other for many years and you have talked about this kind of certification or certificate for so long, and I'm so glad that it has really come to fruition. And as Kristen said it was just the right timing of having everybody kind of at the at the table at the right time. So Kristen, just kind of backing up a little bit, what were some of those challenges? Like you were on the ABA board and kind of getting this develop and implement this type of certification program.
Kristen:Yeah, the ABA uses the ASTM International Development Standards, which is the American Society for Testing and Materials. And so all of our programs, I'll actually take one step back and say that the American Board of Audiology is an entity of the American Academy of Audiology. And we are the subboard under the AAA board that um creates and administers uh credentialing programs. So we're constantly looking to uh lift the bar for audiology, raise the bar, and come out with new certifications and so forth. A certification, as I described before, is basically an exam. So that one is not, I mean, we have to come up with all the content, but it's not as uh let's just say us putting a certificate together is a lot more work because you have to come up with the content, the videos and things you're gonna teach people. And in this case, uh the EAA had basically developed the content for us already. So that challenge was overcome. But what we do on in the ABA board when we're looking at uh coming up with one of these new certificates or certifications is we make a proposal to the American Academy of Audiology board and get it approved and then start to work on it. And then normally we would have to gather content experts that would create all the content, and then we have to write the questions that are going to be in the quizzes, and we have to have people test it all and so forth. In this case, like I said, the EAA came to us with that. In the past, in some of our certificate programs, like we've got a tinnitus certificate and a precepting certificate at the ABA. Uh, one of the challenges has been uh keeping it up to date because any of us in the audiology world knows it changes, everything changes in the blink of an eye all the time. And so again, we we're already on the fourth uh edition of the handbook. And so that will just, as the uh handbook evolves, the certificate program will just evolve with it. And once you've got the certificate, it's yours. You don't have to get re-credentialed afterward. But new audiologists coming in down the line will get whatever the new edition is.
Carrie:Perfect. Cheryl, coming to ABA with a lot of the content, can you kind of maybe share a little bit about that framework and what you came to ABA with?
Cheryl:Well, you were part of that, Carrie, as one of our authors. But in this fourth edition of the handbook, a couple of things happened. Uh, one, it became more of an edited book. My co-author Jane Seaton and I are truly not practicing audiologist anymore. And our goal is to keep this book representative of the actual practice of educational audiology. And so we have many invited authors for the various chapters in the textbook. And the other side of that is the publisher, plural, has a pretty rigorous edition update process, which is about every five years you have to update their textbooks. And I think that has to do with just staying current in the market and their own marketing. But what that does is then it creates a natural update for the certificate program because, as Kristen said, when as soon as we have to do another edition, we will re-record all of the lectures. And one of the things that's unique about the educational audiology certificate program is we actually have video lectures for each chapter. And then so that it's divided into seven modules, and then within each module there's a series of lectures based on the chapters in the book, and then there is a 20-question self-assessment. But that's different from the other certificate programs that have material, but it's a static program in that you review a PowerPoint slide, a series of PowerPoints on the various topics, and then you take an assessment. So one of the things that I really learned from this whole process is how much the video brings a textbook to life. And when you go back and start watching the videos, it makes the whole handbook chapters all mean so much more. And our intent with developing the videos was not to be redundant totally to what was in every chapter because we want people to read the chapters. But really, the authors charged with pulling out key points each of those chapters to keep the lecture at around 45 minutes to an hour per chapter and just highlight key points that would help guide people through then the content in each of the chapters. And I it was the biggest aha for me to start watching the videos as they were coming in and saying, oh my gosh, why did we never think about doing textbooks like this before? Because it totally changed the enjoyment of the material because you bring in individual perspectives, and it's like the person's kind of talking to you, you know, in terms of the lectures. So that part for me was really exciting to see.
Carrie:Yeah, and I have gone through the whole certificate program too. And I will also say that the videos really added a lot to the program, to all of the modules and being able to really learn in a different way. And I learned a lot from going through the certificate program, even as a seasoned educational archaeologist. How did you determine the number of modules that you needed? And was there a criteria around that for the certificate program?
Cheryl:We tried to be consistent with the other programs that currently exist. So again, the certificate program is really just an entry-level set of knowledge and skills for people coming into educational audiology from audiology. And so there's 17 chapters, I think, in the handbook. And we kind of grouped things according to what would make up the seven modules. Two of the modules kind of standalone because we felt there may be interest in people who maybe didn't want to take the whole program but wanted to take a specific course. So the APD lecture is standalone, and the remote mic assistive technology, that whole chapter is standalone. Again, because those are two areas that we think people coming into educational audiology or currently practicing educational audiology would like to have the update in knowledge. So that's, you know, kind of how we decided it was based on the amount of time it would take so that there was consistency across the modules in the lecture time. There was did end up being some variation, so there's a few lectures that are worth more continuing edit credits than others in the modules.
Carrie:So, Kristen, I know you mentioned that you wish you would have had this program like three years ago when you kind of jumped into educational audiology. Can you just share a little bit more about who you think might benefit from going through this program?
Kristen:Yeah, I think anybody who is, especially someone like me, new into educational audiology, anyone that's thinking about making a career switch, or even some students that are thinking out, I will say that the program to actually receive the certificate, you have to be a licensed audiologist. And once you register and begin the program, you've got one year to complete it. So I would tell uh maybe fourth-year students that are already maybe halfway through their program or something might want to start it as long as you know you're gonna graduate and get your license during that year. You know, you don't want to start it too soon, or you'll you'll do the whole program and you can't actually call yourself a certificate holder if you're not licensed. But yeah, I think anybody just like you said here's having been an educational archaeologist for years, it's always good to brush up on your knowledge. I tell my students all the time that archaeology is you're never job learning. You're always gonna be learning something new every day. So I think anybody that has any interest in ed I would be a good candidate for the program.
Carrie:Well, now that it's been out, what, a couple of months now? When did it come out? August 15th. Oh, yeah. So uh have either of you heard any feedback from professionals who have earned the certificate?
Kristen:So we have 17 to date as of last Friday. We have 17 people registered for it, and six have completed it in a month, so that's pretty good. And we just figured out how to do a formal exit survey at first because the way the certificate is set up where everyone has to take module one, but then the rest of them can be taken in any order. So we couldn't embed an exit survey into say like the last module, because you might not take that last. But what's happening now is when people are receiving their certificate, ABA is sending them a survey. And so we've only gotten one of those back, and it was all just top scores, like really excellent. But just anecdotally, on our national ed uh listserv, I just hear first of all, people raving about the idea finally being almost just being recognized as a specialty. And people just seem excited about it. Like you said, people like both of you said, people like the live the videos instead of just having to read the material. And so we at ABA and and I'm also a member of EAA, we're all really excited about it, and we're excited to hear more, get more of these exit surveys as more and more people take the course.
Carrie:Cheryl, have you heard anything?
Cheryl:No, my most recent involvement was in, and I want to actually step back and thank some people at EAA. So Brianne Fink was head of the certificate committee that really got this back going again. And then through the whole board throughout this process, put in endless hours to get everything done. But Kathy Riley, we enlisted to go through and make sure that she went through the whole program from a technical perspective and found, you know, different errors where that, especially in the captioning, where the captioning didn't say what the word was because the captioners didn't know that Eddie was E H D I rather than E D D Y. Little things like that. So I've been more on the troubleshooting end of this than on hearing what people have said as they've gone through, other than Carrie, you've been excited about it and a few other people who finished, but it's pretty new still. So we'll wait to hear. But the feedback will be really important for ABA as well as for us at EAA in terms of how we continue to move forward. And I don't know if we'll talk about marketing, but I'll talk a little bit about that if you want to, because I think that's going to be a big part of the success of the program.
Carrie:Yeah, we can definitely, do you want to talk about it now and get it at there since we're talking about educational audiology awareness?
Cheryl:So, from my perspective, one of the benefits of having this program, as Kristen said earlier and you, is that it formalizes our practice in the schools. It has a product that's associated with. So we don't get degrees in educational audiology. But now that we have a certificate, it actually I think makes our profession much more formal. We all know that as audiologists, but we need to use this now with special education administrators, school supervisors to really help them understand that the role that we have is critical and that we need to be working towards our, you know, the numbers that we have to meet student needs in school districts, our workloads, and those kinds of things. So we're in the process now of identifying different organizations, like CACE is the Association of Special Education Directors, CEC, the Council for Exceptional Children, NASDAQ, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, the School Nurses Association is critical. We're in the process of identifying these key groups that we need to give them information and hopefully publish it in their online newsletters or whatever is available to us to publish so we can build awareness at that level about our role in the schools. So I think that's going to be really important for our profession, is the kind of marketing that we're able to do with the ABA.
Carrie:Yeah, and you're naming all of those different things. One thing that kind of comes to my mind is marketing to like AUD programs, especially if educational audiology isn't a key component of their programming. This, like what Kristen said, like kind of you gotta wait till you're almost to the end. But if you are taking a job in the schools, this would be something that they could help promote to really help their students be more prepared. What do you think this? I guess endorsement or certification, you kind of talked about the credibility and getting it marketing out there to the broader systems in education. But how do you see someone that has these letters after their name, the helping them professionally?
Kristen:Go ahead, Kristen. Okay. So I know that in the school system, um, like for instance, in our school system, you receive extra stipends for having certifications and certificates for things. That's just kind of a nice bonus. But I think just as we've talked about, it's going to help let our administrators and so forth know that this is, you know, a bona fide specialty of audiology and very much needed in the schools and yeah, just help elevate our professional status so that people know that we're held accountable to be an expert in this particular subspecialty.
Carrie:How would someone who's maybe newer in the schools, employed, who may feel like they don't know enough yet, advocate to their supervisor or superintendent that this might be something they should be supporting financially and time-wise for professionals.
Kristen:That's always a challenge in the schools because I know, for instance, I'm in a a Title I school where our budget is very, very tight. So but I would say that if there's any kind of if if you have any kind of benefit for continuing education, this sure would be an excellent way to use it.
Cheryl:I was working with head of deaf education in the state of South Carolina, I guess it's okay to say, and they uh lament, and he's at the Department of Education level, but he's consultant area's deaf ed, but they lament that they don't have adequate professional development for many of their related service providers. And so because it's so inexpensive, I mean, they could never provide continuing ed at the rate of what it costs to take the program. So the state is actually paying for their educational audiologists to go through the certificate program as their continuing ed for this year. And I'm assuming it will continue as others come in into the system in that state. So I think that's another way that we could market this is, you know, as Kristen said, really hitting the the relevancy of continuing or professional development, which we know does not exist for most educational audiologists in schools.
Carrie:Yeah, those are both good ways to kind of think about that. As we think about this certificate program evolving, where do you see this in the next five years or 10 years? Either one of you.
Kristen:I think as the just like Cheryl said, the the handbook will will evolve and legislation's always changing, rules are always changing, just the technology we work with is constantly changing. When I came into this office, um, there was an audiologist that was retiring, and the technology that was here um was a big mix of some really antique stuff and some really, really new stuff. And so it's constantly, you know, we're going to just like everything in audiology, it's going to have to keep evolving that way. And I think the certificate will have to keep up with it.
Cheryl:I think too that the certificate program sort of sets up standards of practice. So again, formalizing what our role is in the school through the content that's required in order to get the certificate. So I know we still have issues in districts and states that still send parents out to get their audiological evaluation, or they only want a contract with educational audiologists to manage the remote mic systems. So I think it really emphasizes our scope of practice. And it's again something we can use when we're advocating at the school level for what our roles really are and the services that we provide.
Kristen:Yeah, I think that's a great point, Cheryl, because I've noticed in just collaborating with the audiologists all over the educational audiologists all over the country on our listserv, and working with grad students who are applying for educational audiology jobs all over the country, that no two jobs are alike in this specialty. And the expectations in each educational audiology job and each district are very, very different. And so I have high hopes, just like Cheryl said, that this is going to help set a standard for what an educational audiologist is expected to do and know.
Carrie:That's a great point. Because as you said, Kristen, on the EAA list of you just heard what different people are doing, and everyone seems to have a different job description in some way, shape, or form, and to have a more cohesive standard of practice, this would definitely be a mechanism for that. As we kind of wrap up, is there any advice that you might give, like an educational audiologist who is considering whether this certificate investment is the right step for them?
Kristen:Gosh, I would just say do it. Yeah, I'm about to launch into it myself. And I think anybody that's, like I said, thinking of making a career change into ed odd, somebody that's new in it, like myself, students who are about ready to head out into the world of audio educational audiology, uh, I just know that there's a lot to learn that at least I know I didn't learn in my graduate programs, which were years ago, but I think there's a lot to be learned from this data, the certificate that we've been put together. And I would say do not hesitate to do it if you're at all in the educational audiology world.
Cheryl:Well, and and to add to that, I think it's a non-threatening activity. You know, you're doing it on your own. You can watch the videos as often as you want, think the assessments are that difficult. And so to me, it's a perfect learning, well, it's not a perfect learning environment because I think you benefit from interaction and that we couldn't build that in, but it is a very non-threatening way to learn as long as you're self-motivated to go through and complete the modules. And you know, there's a lot of resources. If you want to learn more about certain components of the content, you can go that way. I also believe the listserv is one of the greatest learning tools there is for educational audiologists. And so, you know, in terms of the structure as it's set up through ABA, if you're a member of ABA or actually I think it's AAA, right? Kristen, if you're a member of AAA or a member of EAA, then you get the member rate.
Kristen:If you are an ABA certification holder or an EAA member. Okay.
Cheryl:But we did set up the structure so that it would it's cheaper for you to become a member of EAA than not, if you want to take the whole course. And then you get with it that EAA listserv and you know other things that come to you as an EAA members. We also, you know, I think a couple of things. I hope that by having this at the ABA with a more broad clinical audiology audience, it will again elevate educational audiology amongst the field of audiology and again formalize it, but we'll help bring in, easily bring in more clinical audiologists who have an interest in supporting kids in schools. So many of our school districts don't have educational audiologists, so they have to contract with somebody in their local community to do some of the services. So even these contract more clinically focused audiologists are going to benefit from what they learn in the program. You know, I don't think we really know all the benefits yet, and we'll learn more as we go through, but I think this has been a pretty awesome program for everybody to support our kids in schools who are deaf and hard of hearing and have 504 plans and have auditory processing deficits and, you know, whatever their auditory deficit is, this is an effort that we can provide our colleagues in audiology as a way to learn about how best to support them.
Carrie:Yes. Well, that makes should make any listener who's thinking about educational audiology or is new in audiology or really wants to brush up on their skills to jump right in and do this non-threatening certificate holder in educational audiology. And Kristen, like you said earlier, you have a whole year to do it. So it's not like you need to sign up and get it done within the next couple of weeks. You have time to do that. Is there anything for either one of you that I didn't ask that I should have asked that you think listeners would want to know about the program?
Kristen:Kristen, I think we need to tell them where to go. Uh yeah, I was thinking about that too. And I'm also going to add in just what Cheryl said about it being non threatening is that at the end of each module, there's like a 20 question quiz and I believe you have to get 17 of them correct to move on to the next module or to pass that module. But you're allowed to go back and study and retake it. If you you know it's not a you know all or none kind of thing. So again it's do it at your own pace because the goal is to learn the material not to sort of trip you up or something. But yes what you can it's if you go to the audiology.org is the American Academy of Audiology website and then you seek out the American Board of Audiology and you'll see where you can either choose certificate programs or certification programs. And obviously choose the certificate program and you'll see and it has a big sign that says new educational audiology in it. You click on there and there's a little handbook you can get into that will tell you very specifically about what's in all the modules and how to get yourself started. And then if you are a member of EAA or an ABA certification holder, you can send an email to Andrew Stafford as Cheryl said and he'll send you the certificate or the coupon code that you need to get the discount. And you can even order the book at a discount right Cheryl through the EAA website and then you just it'll walk you right through registering and you're in it's on the eAudiology platform once you get in. And then you just work your way through it and when you finish all the all those uh modules successfully you can call yourself a certificate holder educational audiology.
Carrie:And you get an actual certificate right Carrie I yes you do. You can download that and frame it and you have your official official credentials then. And you can put it on your business code.
Cheryl:You can so I want to make just one clarification and that is I'm not making money on this program through sales of the educational audiology handbook. Jane and I have turned the copyright uh royalties over to EAA to use that as income to support this certificate program. So this is when you purchase materials you're benefiting EAA. You're not benefiting Jane or I just want people to be clear that this is not for me to make money.
Carrie:That's amazing Cheryl we're really great that is right to kind of pay it forward for the profession of who's going to become an educational ideology next. Because I know every educational ideologist benefits from having the handbook.
Kristen:Yes 100% we hope to keep it that way.
Carrie:Yes it's awesome well I want to say thank you both for being a guest today on the Empower Your Audiology podcast and sharing about this vision and what has come to fruition the certificate in educational audiology I do think it's going to elevate the profession in a way that will benefit students who are in our schools who are deaf and hard of hearing or have auditory processing. So to have more of a framework that we can go to will be wonderful for the future of our profession moving forward. So I just want to say thank you to both of you for being guests today. Thank you, Carrie, for having us yes thank you.
Cheryl:It's great to be able to talk up the program yeah we want to get the word out there.
Carrie:And listeners thank you for listening to the Empower Ear Audiology podcast. If you like this or know someone that would benefit from hearing please share today and have a great day