Hearing Enabled

Commitment Statement: Connor Sullivan wants to spread the joy of hearing.

Twenty year old Connor Sullivan, a communication sciences and disorders sophomore at the University of Oklahoma, is an advocate for hearing after having undergone a procedure that enabled him to hear.

Sullivan wasn’t diagnosed with a hearing impairment until the age of four. He wore a hearing aid until December 2010 when he underwent a procedure that allowed him to experience hearing for the first time in many years.

“It was nerve wrecking,” Sullivan said. “It was the most pain I have ever felt. There were all kinds of risks, but when you get to that point in life, it’s worth the risk.”

Every day Sullivan goes to Starbucks and listens for his name after he orders. It’s really a wonderful feeling being able to hear your name called, he said.

There are 14 students registered with the Disability Resource Center this semester who  have hearing impairments, said Suzette Dyer, director of OU’s Disability Resource Center. But Sullivan is not one of them.

Sullivan said he isn’t registered because he is no longer permanently deaf; his cochlear implant enables him to hear and carry out a normal life.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved cochlear implants for adults in 1985 and five years later for children. Sullivan is among the approximately 67,000 people in the U.S. who have implants, according to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Sullivan said his implant allows him to perform tasks he would not have been able to do before.
Without the implant, Sullivan said he wouldn’t have been able to become a reporter for OU’s student run newspaper.

“I would have never been able to conduct interviews without my implant,” Sullivan said.

Hearing allows individual a sense of independence they might not otherwise have, he said.
Sullivan said he made more friends after the procedure.

Sullivan said he wants to help others realize the world of opportunities he gained after his procedure. He is studying to become an audiologist.

“I want to help deaf people hear like somebody did for me,” he said.

According to the American Speech Language Hearing Association, both children and adults receive extensive rehabilitation services from audiologist after their procedures. Sullivan said he wants to become an audiologists his patients can relate to.

Stephanie Tadajewski is a communication sciences and disorders sophomore like Sullivan.
She recognized Sullivan from fourth grade and became friends with him this semester.

“He feels he has a calling to help other kids who are in his situation,” Tadajewski said.

Tadajewski said she will focus on the verbal communication aspect of communication disorders, and like Connor her goal is to help individuals communicate.

“He’s going to help the kids listen, and I’m going to help them speak,” Tadajewski said.


(VIDEO: Ajinur Setiwaldi, 2:04)




Sullivan's blog about his personal experiences: http://connor56.blogspot.com/
Sullivan's opinion column about hearing: http://oudaily.com/news/2012/mar/01/column-be-thankful-hearing-because-i-certainly-am/

Citation of non-human sources:

Boswell Susan. (2012). American speech-language-hearing association. Retrieved from          http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Cochlear-Implant/

Fda u.s. food and drug administration. (2009, April 16). Retrieved from http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/ImplantsandProsthetics/CochlearImplants/default.htm

National institute on deafness and other communication disorders. (2011, March). Retrieved from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/coch.aspx

Women fall through faculty gender gap at OU

Sources:
Nancy Mergler
OU Provost
405-325-3221
nmergler@ou.edu

Micheal Nash
OU Press Secretary
(405) 325-3916
michealnash@ou.edu

Data from 2011 OU Factbook ;Graph by: Ajinur Setiwaldi

The Faculty of the University of Oklahoma is dominated by men with a majority of them occupying the total instructional faculty and deans' offices.

According to the 2011 OU Factbook, more than 80 percent of 391 professors on the Norman campus are men. Women occupied about 24 percent of all full professor positions at four- year colleges and universities in the United States, according to a report by the American Association of University Professors.

It has been forty years since Congress passed a law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. Yet women still struggle to be admitted to the top faculty ranks in colleges and universities, according to the American Association of University Professors.

The Association of University Professors report that in 2003, women occupied 43 percent of all faculty positions. They made up 39 percent of all full-time and 48 percent of part-time faculty.

Women occupy about 34 percent of total full-time faculty at OU, according to the 2011 OU Factbook.

The OU Institutional Equality Office has an affirmative action policy. OU is committed to the continuation and expansion of positive programs which reinforce and strengthen affirmative action policies because of its desire to ensure social justice and promote campus diversity, according to Institutional Equality Office website.

“OU recruits faculty at the national level,” said provost Nancy Mergler.

The percentage of minorities and women in each OU academic unit is compared with the percentage of minorities and women in the national availability pool for that discipline, she said.

Mergler said if the availability percentage within the national pool is greater than the incumbent percentage within the OU academic unit, deans, chairs and directors are informed of the number needed to mirror the national data.

According to the Fall 2010 faculty census and OU's affirmative action plans, the national availability data predicts that 341 of 921 of the regular faculty would be women. OU's actual percentage of women in the regular faculty is four percent lower than the prediction.

OU is constantly working to create and maintain a diversity, OU spokesman Micheal Nash said.
These efforts have created programs like the OU Cousins and Religious Studies Program, Nash said.

“In regard to faculty and staff, OU strives to maintain and further advance the diversity of our campus through each hiring process,” Nash said.

Waiting in the lobby outside The OU Daily

The lobby outside the Oklahoma Daily newsroom is a preculiar place in the evening. Students come in and out, some with smiles on their faces and others rubbing their temples. The custodian fire up her vacuum and greet students over the pleasant vroom of her equipment. Students who arrive too early for the 9 p.m. staff meeting wait in the lobby shifting through newspapers. Then as the meeting time approaches the entrance doors open, and the ID scanner beeps in recognition as students swipe their cards for passage into the newsroom.  VIDEO: Ajinur Setiwaldi Runtime: 00:51