A Conversation with Dr. Gail Whitelaw: The Teen campUS Experience

I am so excited to share my personal and professional passion of working with teens with hearing loss during this episode. This week, I sit down with Dr. Gail Whitelaw who is the co-coordinator of the campUS experience.  Dr. Whitelaw and I have been coordinating the campUS experience for the past 8 years.  This is an overnight experience for teens with hearing loss to develop leadership and advocacy skills while spending time at the Ohio State University.  Join us today for a conversation about life lessons learned personally and professionally as well as key components of starting your own campUS experience.  

Be sure to like campUS on Facebook and Check Out the YouTube videos about campUS and feeling confident!  

https://www.facebook.com/campUS.teens.HL

YouTube:  campUS Video with Phonak Teen Advisors

https://youtu.be/lGDNdjkXtDM

Feeling Confident with Hearing Loss

https://youtu.be/VZlfa2hZbQc

For more information about Dr. Carrie Spangler- check out her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-spangler/

For transcripts of this episode- visit the podcast website at: https://empowearaudiology.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

00:00:00] Welcome to episode six of empowEAR Audiology with Dr. Carrie Spangler.
[00:00:16] Welcome to ther empowEAR Audiology Podcast. My name is Dr. Carrie Spangler, and I am your host. I am a passionate audiologist with a lifelong journey of living with hearing challenges in this vibrant hearing world. Thank you for listening, and I hope you will subscribe ask others to listen and leave me a positive review.
MUSIC
[00:00:46] Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Carrie Spangler with empowEAR Audiology. I cannot wait for my listeners to hear the next two episodes of empowEAR Audiology. One of the areas that I am most passionate about Both personally and professionally is working with teams who have hearing challenges. Before I introduce our guest for the episodes.
[00:01:11] I wanted to share a little bit about the background of campUS. So when I was growing up, I did not have the opportunity to meet anyone with hearing loss. I also did not have the chance to directly learn about advocacy, to transition to college and work research tells us that. Social emotional learning and developing skills about self-awareness self-management social awareness and responsible decision-making is critical for lifelong success.
[00:01:46] In a nutshell, it is important for teens with hearing challenges, to have strong determination skills about their hearing loss to navigate through life. Through a combination of my own personal experiences and my professional knowledge of need. I am excited to share the campUS experience that I coordinate with dr.
[00:02:09] Gail Whitelaw. We knew that by creating a safe environment to allow for the same self connections and relationships, we could positively influence a successful transition to life. Campus in a nutshell, campUS is an overnight program for teens with hearing loss held at the Ohio state university where Dr. Gail Whitelaw work. Counselors; they all have hearing challenges as well, and they provide a strong mentorship as they share their own personal experiences. Keynote presenters. Are inspirational celebrities and their area of expertise, and also have hearing loss. Parallel to the teen track is a parent and professional track as well. [00:03:05] So come join me and the upcoming episodes. As we dive deeper into the benefit of bringing teams with hearing challenges together for a two day experience.
MUSIC
[00:00:37] I cannot wait to share this podcast with all of you today. One of the joys of the podcast is that I get to interview some of my best friends in the field of audiology. And today I have Dr. Gail Whitelaw with me. So Dr. Gail Whitelaw, she is an audiologist. She's an audiology faculty member and clinic director at the department of speech and hearing science at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
[00:01:04] She's interested in many of the boutique areas of audiology, including working with patients with tinnitus, auditory processing disorders, functional hearing losses and pediatrics. And she also teaches in these areas. She's also interested in professional development, specifically leadership education and in clinic education.
[00:01:27] She's the past president of the Ohio Academy of Audiology, a past president of the American Academy of Audiology, a past chair of the board of governors of the American Board of Audiology. And she is a dear, dear friend of mine. And I'm really excited to have you today. Welcome Gail to the empowEAR Audiology podcast.
[00:01:51] Thank you, Carrie. I feel absolutely the same way and so honored to get to be here and talk about a topic that we love. And I get to talk about a talk topic I love at the same time. It's great. So Gail, I was just trying to think before this podcast tonight, today, how long we've known each other and how we really got connected.
[00:02:17] Do you want to share. Sure. You know, I think you and I were saying, I think we've known each other for like forever. and I'm quite a bit older than you. So my forever is a little bit different than yours, but you know, you and I had known each other, I think, more peripherally and, we hooked up at a Phonak conference in Las Vegas, where you came to me and said, I have this idea and we need to talk about it.
[00:02:43] And I was kind of intrigued about what idea you might have and what you were thinking about. And we trucked herself out to the pool in a casino in Las Vegas, which is a terrible place to have to have a meeting, but somebody had to do it and sat and talked about. What I consider to be one of the best ideas I had heard in a long, long time.
[00:03:05] And it's turned out to be a passion. I know for both of us. And I tell people it's a life-changing event. And that was thinking about a transition teen camp for, young. People with hearing loss, with hearing challenges who are going to be transitioning to the college, to the work world, whatever they're going to be transitioning to.
[00:03:24] You had this fantastic idea and you let me come along, on your dream. And since then, I think we've grown so much closer because we get to work closely on this incredible opportunity that. As I said, it's truly been life-changing for me. So, you know, we both have a passion for working with teenagers and, you know, I think a lot of audiologists who like pediatrics, like the little, teeny tiny, cute babies, and when they start crawling and I liked them too, but I think that I really liked the challenge of working with teenagers to watch them grow from childhood to adolescence, to adults.
[00:04:03] And see the influence that having great audiology services and great audiology support can have. So I love the fact that you saw that as a vision and a dream, and I have gotten to participate in it for the past eight years. So I know, and I. I agree with you about pediatric audiologists, really liking the little babies and the toddlers and the young ones.
[00:04:28] And then they roll their eyes. When you tell them that you love working with them teenagers. And I think really what drove me into this was a factthat as a teenager, going and living with hearing loss, I was the one and only, and I didn't want that for other
teens. Who were going into college and, and to the workforce to not have an opportunity to be empowered or have leadership skills and advocacy skills and self-determination skills that are really important for.
[00:05:05] For their life success. And I think that's kind of, again, how both of our passions with audiologists really came together to make this campus experience important for the teens. And so you mentioned, yes, we've been doing this for eight years, right. And, so. What do you think are some of the benefits of having our own campus?
[00:05:31] Well, maybe we should just start with, kind of, how did we, how would we get started? I mean, I know we talked about it and at the pool, but what do you think some of the components of making campus important for a success would be. Well, you know, I think first of all, it's a logistical issue of finding a place that's going to be comfortable to comfortably house.
[00:05:54]everybody that we want to have come, you know, our campers or students that come our counselors, you and me. parents and how we get them there because, you know, I, I do think one of the strengths of the program that we've created has been it's
phenomenal for teens, but we hear as much phenomenal from parents in terms of their interaction.
[00:06:19] And for some of them they're, they're kind of a one, and only, also they haven't had a lot of input from other parents. You know, I think it's funny because every year the same question comes up and I'll get back to your original question. But the same question comes up to say, how do you get your kids to wake up in the morning when they have a hearing loss?
[00:06:37] Because I go in and wake them up every day. And all the parents who have older kids are college students. Like, no, no, no. That's. Not what we do. We're going to shake awake and they've never heard of that. And it may, it's made me think as an audiologist, what more information we need to share, but I think there's a logistical component.
[00:06:55] And then there's the component of how do we develop a place where, what you talked about, where leadership can be, highlighted. Where our campers have the opportunity to work with counselors who have walked their walk. Every one of our counselors has, has walk their walk as a team with hearing loss. you know, I think that that's a really important aspect of it because I look at how much they bond to the counselors each year.
[00:07:23] And I think for a lot of these young people, they've never met anybody. Like you who's so successful or like our counselor. who are incredible. And I also think that the fact that we've had keynote speakers who have been just exceptional in so many ways, you know, we've had everything from comedians to musicians, to, TV personalities, to miss San Antonio.
[00:07:53] And every one of them brings their unique story to it. But I'm so glad that we decided to do it that way. because I think that it really highlights that hearing loss doesn't define people. And I think for a lot of kids, If they've not known somebody like that,
it really, in that same way, they don't really know that because they may be going through what typical teenagers go through.
[00:08:19] And, maybe they're angry. Maybe they don't have anybody to talk to. So I think those connections, those networks have been just critical, Carrie, and then the parent part for me. Has really been beneficial because it's allowed us to bring graduate students from a
number of graduate programs in Ohio, not just Ohio state, even though it's on the Ohio state campus, to come in and actually hear what parents.
[00:08:46] And their kids have to say. And, you know, I can't say those things as eloquently. And I remember the one year that we had a, we have a parent reception and the kids are all off having a great time at the recreation center and doing fun games. And the parents are sitting around drinking beer and wine and chatting each other up.
[00:09:07] And the one year when I usually asked, lasts like an hour and a half or two hours, and the one year were like three and a half hours into it and you had texted me and I was like, Yeah, we're still here. We're still, parents are still asking questions. And one of the parents went around and said to our students, I want you to be better audiologists than my child has had.
[00:09:26] What have you learned today that you will take with you and integrate into your professional practice? And I have to say that was really powerful to me and listening to what the students, my graduate students, our graduate students had to say was incredibly powerful to me. And again, these things are career changing for me.
[00:09:46] And I've been an audiologist for 36 years, and I'm still learning new things from these folks. So, you know, I think the main components are, how do we get a comfortable logistical environment for them, but more importantly, how do we bring in the right people and the right mix of people? And do things that are exciting and maybe the students haven't seen before, maybe the parents haven't seen before and that opportunity to create such a healthy, I think, a happy network too.
[00:10:14] So those are the things I would say, or have been really successful for us. Yeah, I agree. And I think maybe what I stepped back for a second for listeners, and just talk a little bit about. The schedule of campus. There's so much, I think, behind the scene that you and I do throughout the year, but just so our listeners can understand.
[00:10:39] out program, but maybe get some other ideas that might fit where they might be in their part of the country or they're stater the location. So do you want to share just a little bit about maybe the agenda or how they get there and then at the end. Sure. you know, I think that [00:11:00] one of the things, as I start to think about this is when people are listening, they're gonna be like, that's a really short period of time.
[00:11:06] It's a really short but intense period of time. So we run campus on Friday and Saturday. we start kind of a half day, a little bit less than a half day on Friday, but we bring our counselors the day before. And part of that is if you're going to run a program like this and you run it on, say a college campus or, through a school you may have to do protecting minors training.
[00:11:30] And so that's something that you need to be really aware of that we became very aware of, but the becoming aware of it has been fabulous from my perspective, because it's. Allowed us to do some things on the Ohio state campus. And so we have our kids move into the dorm. parents do not stay in the dorm.
[00:11:50] They stay somewhere else and there's beautiful places to stay around and. If they live in Columbus or the area, they can stay at home if they want. But I think that kind of defeats their purpose because I think it's lovely when they get to spend a little more time. Sometimes they go out to dinner together and stuff, but the day starts with our campers going on, meeting each other, talking about why they're there.
[00:12:12]Going out and doing a scavenger hunt. And we're very fortunate that we have the opportunity to, to work with our Americans with disabilities act office, our ADA office and our director of the ADA at Ohio state is Scott Lisner. And Scott has embraced everything related to campus for us. I think it's been great Carrie, because we just have to ask and it happens, We, you know, obviously if you're looking at something like this, we want to recruit a diverse group of kids, whoever wants to come.
[00:12:45] And so the diversity includes communication style. It includes, some are implant wears, some are hearing aid where some are not any wearers of anything. They don't want those things anymore. and they may be going through that. so we have them do a scavenger hunt and check out campus. And I think they always really enjoy that.
[00:13:06] And then, they eat dinner and one of the residence hall dining halls, and I am always kind of, Kind of entertained by that because of the fact that, I think for a lot of kids, they've never been on a college campus and I always tell people we're not trying to recruit them to Ohio state. Although a lot of them do become Ohio state Buckeyes.
[00:13:26] And that's fantastic because they have knowledge of the campus, but we want them to be successful no matter what they're going to do with college, isn't the way they're going, whatever. That's fine. But I always think it's fun for them to get to eat in the dining hall, especially when it's all you can eat.
[00:13:41] I remember our first year I was so worried because that kid who ate all the cereal, he was just eating like bowl after bowl or fruit loops. And he's like, this is the greatest place on the face of the earth. You get to eat all this food. And I was like, Oh my gosh, he's going to get sick. And his moms, dad are gonna be like, what did you feed him for dinner?
[00:13:59] I'm like, Oh look, 42 bowls of fruit loops. You know? that was a fun year. And then we split up at dinner time. Where Carrie, as you know, you take the kids and you guys go and do some recreational activities, and that's a great time for bonding. and I'll, I'll tell a story that really stuck out to me in that bonding experience.
[00:14:20] And then I take the parents. And any professionals who want to come and join us. And we do a, like a parent, I guess, open house kind of thing. And so those are two parallel tracks and I think they're both equally important. I think it's great that the kids have the opportunity to go and do some cool stuff, and interact, you know, with playing Dodge ball
or, you know, basketball, volleyball, or whatever they're doing, or they're just sitting around talking.
[00:14:48] It's really great. We send the parents off on their merry way and you take the kids back to the residence hall, back to the dorm and they do a lot of bonding there. They do, some getting to know you games and what I'm always impressed with. It's how quickly those experiences turn from kind of surface-y stuff like let's throw a beach ball and has words on it and describe something.
[00:15:13] That's a great activity, but they get really deep really quickly. And, I'm always amazed by that. And I wouldn't have believed that. If I hadn't witnessed it, but I think it's just, you know, it's a Testament to you and how we've set this up. And it's a Testament to the kids that come and they're so hungry for wanting to participate.
[00:15:38] And so then they go to bed, and then they wake up the next morning, nice and early and have breakfast. And then they go on their merry way. The kids go on their merry way to, doing activities on campus. Again, some more exploring, you know, what is, if you're going to be a college student, what does it look like to be in a lecture hall that holds 400 people?
[00:16:00] That's very different than most people's high schools. You know, I can't think of any high school. It has a 400 person Teaching room, an auditorium, perhaps, but not a room where there's teaching. we usually have whoever our keynote speaker is, and these are carefully selected by Carrie and me. And, oftentimes we have been fortunate to get them sponsored by a manufacturer.
[00:16:22]so they're, they're happy to have them come, but our keynote speakers like to come and play and have fun with our kids. To hang out with the campers, with the teenagers and have a great time while all that's going on. I usually spend my time in the law school at Ohio state, where we run the parent and professional group and we tend to bring in things, that might look at something like hearing dogs or something like, I know, how do you go about getting, you know, what used to be called BVR, but now it's called opportunities for Ohioans with disabilities.
[00:16:56] What are those opportunities there? People, parents always want to talk about hearing aid technology. Scott Lissner always does a great thing about when you're going to look at colleges. What might you want to ask about. When you're going to look at a college to see if it's friendly for the kinds of issues.
[00:17:13] And we know that they all should be friendly. That shouldn't even be a question, but we also know that some places are more diverse or broad than others and easier to work with. So, we do that then, the campers come over and meet the parents and we have a big lunch together. we can never order the right amount of food.
[00:17:33] So if you're thinking about planning something like this order, my best advice to you is order less food than you really need. Because you always have a lot of leftover food. The kids love it and they think it's really fun. And we've ordered fun things like Chipotle and city barbecue. And they've had a great time with that.
[00:17:52] And then we go back and I do need to go take a step back. one of the highlights for parents. Is the parent panel. we have parents of, of former campers. We've had Carrie's parents a number of times, and I think it's really nice for the parents to have somebody that they can look up to and say, you've walked this walk because those of you that have had kids who go off to college, you know, I have a 24 year old daughter and.
[00:18:20] I work in a university. I know what it's like to be in a university, but it's still a very terrifying thing for a lot of parents and parents are having things like, how can I trust that they'll actually have fire alarms that work? How can I trust that my daughters or sons roommate is going to be helpful?
[00:18:38] If there's an emergency? How can I trust my kids going to get up with that shake away thing? You know, you know, all those questions. And I've been so impressed with our parent panel and the only thing that ever tops it for me is in the afternoon, our keynote speakers speak. And then we have our counselors on a panel and I always find it.
[00:18:59] And maybe it's because. We know them we're vested in them, but I always find it the most amazing thing to hear these young people who are so accomplished and accomplished across a range of things are not all great students. Some of them are great athletes. Some of them are great workers and they love their jobs and it doesn't matter what they're great at.
[00:19:19] They're great human beings and great role models. And so I think that that's always something for me and the kids always love the panels. But the parents love it too, because I think for a lot of them, You, and I have heard so many times Carrie, that parents still have all these questions that we as audiologists, haven't always answered.
[00:19:40] And sometimes they're things in Ohio school for the deaf did a study a number of years ago. And one of the things that parents of Teenagers were still asking us, why does my child have hearing loss? What kind of hearing loss do they have? I was like blown away by this because I assume we all do such a great job and I'm not being, I'm not trying to be anybody's critic because some of those kids are my kids.
[00:20:04] You know, they're kids that I saw. I thought it was the most clear communicator on the face of the earth and it didn't work out that way. So I think it's a really great opportunity for us to be reminded as professionals. But for those parents and for the kids to see, Hey, look at the success that's coming your way.
[00:20:21] And here are the things that I've done to work for me. How can we make that work for you? and not every suggestion obviously works for everybody. And at the end of that, Almost two days. I think it's really an emotional time. you know, you and I have had so many, I mean, I think we can talk about, we could talk all night about positives that have come out of this.
[00:20:45] It always changes me every year. We've done campUS. It changes me in such incredible ways. And I think it changes the campers that we work with. And I think it changes the parents and it changes professionals who come. And I think it's just an
amazing experience to see people bonding over something that gives them confidence and better.
[00:21:05] Self-esteem. Can I go on about one more story? A couple of years ago, we had a comedian who was fantastic. And, I thought he did such a great job with us. And, so there's two parts of the story. The first is he came, he was a keynote speaker. He had been on America's Got talent. he's hysterical. He had clean humor and he made a lot of jokes about his own hearing because he has a hearing loss and he stopped Carrie and I were sitting close to each other.
[00:21:37] You and I were sitting close to each other. He stopped. And he said, when I was in school, I needed you guys. I needed this campUS thing because I didn't want to wear my hearing aids. And I was a one and only, and he talked about all of that and I thought, wow, for an adult, who's really accomplished to still think back on.
[00:21:58] If I had had this, how much it would have helped me, that would have been fantastic. So he wanted us to come to see a show at the funny bone in Columbus. He was performing on Sunday night. So I went with a couple of our counselors and, He was, he did a really great, he was hysterical and he did a great bit, and we were going to go meet him in the, in the foyer when he was done.
[00:22:20] And there was a young girl that was there, maybe about 14, 15, and I thought he had to be over 18 to get in that place. So I was kind of shocked she was there, but I noticed she was wearing hearing aids. And I was kind of walking right behind she and her mom and dad. And she said to her mom, he was hysterical.
[00:22:36] And he said a lot of things that I wanted to say. But sometimes when people say those things, they're making fun of people with hearing loss. And I don't want to be made fun of, I just want somebody to get me. And when I was telling him this, I said, overheard this conversation, you have to hear it. He got teary.
[00:22:52] And he said, you know, That's what I want to hear. That's what I want to represent. So I think that those have been such incredible opportunities that I've been given through this program and to learn as an audiologist and to use that skill, not just at campUS, but year round with everybody that I see.
[00:23:12] Yeah, no, I agree. A hundred percent. It's just the makeup of the different aspects of the program really fit together like a puzzle and really impact on different levels, different people who actually have an opportunity to be a part of it. And I just wanted to add, so obviously all of our campers had hearing loss of some degree or.
[00:23:35]way, and the usually sophomore, juniors and seniors, they just graduated from high school. So that's kind of the population of campers, but I just wanted to add that one of the revelations for me when we started this, that I wasn't expecting was the impact that it had on a counselor. So I know that they are all about counselors.
[00:24:00] One of the criteria to be a counselor for campus is to have a hearing loss and you can have any degree of hearing loss. And some of them were cochlear implant users. Some
of them were hearing aid users, some of them used American sign language. So we had kind of a mix of, of different, counselors and. As someone who was kind of in charge of mentoring, the counselors as an individual with hearing loss.
[00:24:26]I got so much out of being able to mentor the counselors and some of our counselors had never had the opportunity to meet others who had hearing loss. And they certainly didn't have the opportunity to mentor anyone with hearing loss and. For me, I think one of the greatest joys, or I guess I want to, I don't want to call it a side effect of campus, but something I wasn't expecting was how much growth that these counselors had in themselves.
[00:24:56] And just being more, I I guess, motivated and unsure of who they were, because they were able to share their own story and their own struggles and their own. Of what they've overcome in their life. And I think by storytelling and sharing, you empower yourself in such a, a different way that you don't realize.
[00:25:21] And at the same time, they were being able to share their stories with these young teenagers. And they were so impressionable with all of our campers. So I just had to share that because I know that was just something. of campUS. I get so much joy out of when we get to choose a camp or a counselor that we, cause that's the one thing we are able to choose.
[00:25:46]And how much growth they've had. And I've just gotten to know, I still keep in contact with all of our counselors on some level, and they have just grown into incredible young adults and in the professions that they have chosen. So add on to that, but I think it's so funny is that. So many of our counselors have been audiologists or audiology students, you know, young audiologists or, you know, in an AuD program.
[00:26:12] And I think, I mean, several of them have said to me, I remember a couple years ago I took a couple of them to the airport. We had dinner at the airport, they were flying out and they were both audiology students and talked about their own journeys and how this would make them more confident about sharing with other people because of the feedback they got.
[00:26:31] But also. More aware of teenagers, because when they might've needed an audiologist, the most. Some, some of us might not have loved them the most. They were, my might've been the less, the least lovable of anybody that, you know, at that point in time in their, in their childhoods. And they were talking about their desire to work with this population and, you know, how it changed them.
[00:26:56] And I totally agree with you. And I always tell people we're not trying to [00:27:00] create Ohio state Buckeyes, and we're not trying to create audiologists. But I think for some of our campers, they've never thought about, you know, audiology would, might be a fantastic career for them and there's a million other fantastic careers.
[00:27:13]and so, you know, giving them exposure to people who love what they do, I think is just such a really important aspect of this too. I agree. And then you said too, and I wanted
to add this in because we, I think what, one of the great things that makes our partnership so great is that you had a university.
[00:27:33] So you had this facility, first of all, plus you have great. AuD students and speech, language pathology students within your own clinic that want to volunteer. And I think they get so much out of it. And then me on the other side, being in the schools as an educational audiologist, having a network of people within our state and neighboring States, because
we've actually opened it up to neighboring States to recruit campers
[00:28:02] And I think, maybe we should talk a little bit about that because I know people say, well, how do you get people to come? Right? Especially teenagers, teenagers don't want to step out of the comfort zone. And they may not even want to admit at this point in their life that they have a hearing loss. And why would they, they want to go to a camp for it.
[00:28:23] But students are teens with hearing loss. So. Any thoughts about recruitment and for people who might be thinking about starting a program, Yeah, I think that reaching out, as you said to educational audiologists, to children's hospitals to clinics, I think are great places. I think our partnership with Hands and Voices has been really strong and that's really helped us, you know, find some kids that we might not have found otherwise.
[00:28:51]and I agree with you. I think, I mean, I think about I, one of our former campers who I think. Really didn't want to come.And his mom kind of said, you need to go. And he was, he, he did campus on his own terms, but he got so much out of it. And he just told me recently, that he. Really really thought that those days were so precious to him
because he hadn't had been around a lot of kids with hearing loss.
[00:29:21] And so I think it's sometimes parents knowing better. And we all know that when you're a teenager, your parents don't know better in your eyes. They're not very smart. And they don't know a lot of things, but I think that we've had some persuasive parents. And I think we've also had some persuasive campers, you know, campers have posted things.
[00:29:39] We have a Facebook group, campers have posted on Facebook. you and I have a book chapter. Yeah. In, in the Flexer I'm going to miss up. Yes. Of all the names. Let's see. It's the. Madell, Wolfe, Shaffer book book. I think it's one of the only book chapters on teenagers with hearing loss. And, we have some things in there that are quotes from, from campers.
[00:30:04] And it's really easy to say I had this experience. You should come and have fun too. I also think that one of the things that works for us, and I said, it's a short time. That short time is a really good thing, because if you come and you really despise it, you're not going to be there for a long time. I don't think we've had anybody ever despise it, but you know, it's a relatively short time to take a risk and that's worked really well to put your foot in and say, and I think we've had so many people go, I wish we could stay here all week or can't we stay longer.
[00:30:37] So I think that that's a real big benefit to it. And just keeping that network open, you know, I think that we've had great success with people who were like, so when is
campUS going to be next year, that's educational audiologist, or pediatric audiologists or former campers, you know, what are we having?
[00:30:53] What are we doing it? And so I think that's a really. You know, word of mouth has been great, but also I think the campers and the counselors speak for themselves, they are the ones that are probably our best recruiting tools. Right? Yeah. I'll never forget. and I, the, the camper that is that, you know, book chapter who her mom had said, you know, she would have never said anything in public about her hearing loss to anybody.
[00:31:26] Her age or her friends or whatever. And her mom said after that experience she posted on her Instagram account, how. awesome her experience. And that was kind of that first time she stepped outside of her own shell in order to just say to all of her friends on Instagram, that this was the greatest experience ever.
[00:31:48] And this is a part of who I am and it's, it's great. It was empowering for her, I think, to kind of be able to say that out loud. Totally agree and that's, and let's face it. We all know this is not an easy age to come out with a lot of those kinds of comments or ideas because fitting in is such a big deal.
[00:32:09] And I think, you know, one of the things I've learned a ton about and part of it is because we researched a book chapter together, but that the age and stage of. Adolescents and young adults is probably one of the most tumultuous in our lives, more so even than, you know, infancy to toddler and as much as we do love those kids.
[00:32:32]I think that it's really easy to overlook the changes that the physical changes, the psychological changes, all, all of it, and it's hard enough being a teenager. And then to add on something that you might not want to share with other people to get that confidence, because, you know, you've brought up advocacy at the very beginning of this, Carrie.
[00:32:52]I think that becoming a good self advocate is one of the best things that we can help people do. you know, they may be afraid they may be afraid of other people's reactions. And when they see, I mean, you know, one of my favorite stories of all times wasn't related to campUS, it was related to a research study that one of our.
[00:33:08]audiology students. And I did, looking at teenagers and hearing loss and kind of what technology they were looking for. And this was like eight years, 10 years ago. And one of our, we had a group of a focus group of all young men and, you know, and we had one young woman in the group. And I knew the young woman's mother very well.
[00:33:27] And we, we met on a Saturday and the manufacturer we were working on what this was, videotaping them and all the guys left with their parents and stuff. And the mom came back in with her daughter and the daughter said to me, I have to tell you something. I never knew that guys with hearing loss could be hot.
[00:33:46] All those guys were hot. And I said to her, why would you think that she said, because you know, having a hearing loss is kind geeky of thing. I said, is that how you think of yourself? And she said, yeah, kind of. She said, but today was different. And I think every opportunity that we can give people to see themselves in a light that reflects
that maybe a little differently than they've ever reflected themselves is, is such a positive one.
[00:34:11] And I take that away from campus every year of. You know how great it is. Like you said, to be able to meet somebody and, really feels strongly about developing a relationship and a network with them. And now you've got the confidence to go out and talk about this. Right. Fantastic. It is. And then the fact that.
[00:34:30] At least the Campers that I still kind of keep in touch with. They meet for the first time, like you said, you know, they're together for a 24 hour period and they become the best of friends. So, and they meet up afterwards and they're connected on social media and that they cannot wait to see each other again.
[00:34:51] So it's just amazing how a 24 hour period and bringing. Together teens who have this similar one, similar connection can blossom into something of lifelong friendship that leads to this. Leadership and advocacy, and just really empowering these students to, I think, these campers, but so listen to the side one, create one of these.
[00:35:20] Okay.
[00:35:27] They said, well, how can you afford this? Like, we, we want to do something like this, but we didn't have no money. I jokingly call you and me the two broke girls. because we're always looking for, for financial aid and you know, part of it is. Your connections with Quota club and so grateful to the Quota for, for helping us out for seeing the value of this for tying it into their mission.
[00:35:54]you know, for you being involved in Quota club, I think that's given us a great start. For us going and talking to manufacturers about our passions about this and why it's important. You know, one of the things I didn't mention is every year Phonak's sends us a box of equipment because a lot of these kids stopped wearing, DM technology when they were little kids and they didn't, you know, they, they.
[00:36:17] They didn't like it anymore. And now they didn't know, things have changed so much and they're so much better now. I think that we've been lucky with manufacturers supporting us. We have parents say to us, and it's not a lot of money, but we have parents say to us, you know, let me contribute. We have families pay $25 to secure a space.
[00:36:37] And if the kid shows up, we give them their $25 back. And most of the parents are like here to keep the 25 bucks. You know, it was worth way more than that. And, you know, I think if I were going to start this again from scratch, or maybe in our ninth year, we might want to look at setting up a, you know, a not-for-profit or a, you know, kind of, five Oh three, experience so that we can fund this a little bit differently, but we've been very, very fortunate.
[00:37:02] And I think the thing that you and I both value, is having access. And I would love for us to have more access, but kids have never really paid to have to come to campus. We've covered all of our expenses. We have gotten some donations, student academies of audiology, both at NOAC and at Ohio state have been very generous with their.
[00:37:24]resources to us over the years. And so I think we've really been able to do a lot and we're pretty, you and I are pretty frugal too, so we're yeah, good deal. Right? Yeah. We've gotten some good deals on stuff. And, the university, we, we work to minimize our costs there and, and ha, and I mentioned, Scott Lissner earlier as our ADA coordinator.
[00:37:47]if you can get services like captioning donated or. interpreters donated. that's an amazing opportunity. And I also think it's interesting because interpreters always say to us, [00:38:00] wow, this was such a neat experience for us. This was so changing for us. And, you know, I think that they kind of fight over getting to come to the campUS.
[00:38:10] If they, you know, if they've interpreted for us one time and they're coming back, they're like, what is that going to be next year? We want to sign up. Yup. I think that's a really cool thing. So we've been able to fund it based on our own grit, determination, and a lot of generosity from a lot of really incredible people that are in our field and outside of our field.
[00:38:29] Yeah, no, I agree. And I think every year grows and people know more about it, so they're more willing to help us out financially so that we can continue to provide this opportunity for the students in the campers and the counselors and the parents and everybody involved in this opportunity or this event.
[00:38:53] So what do you think? I think we should end up with, you know, if somebody was. Thinking of starting a teen program of any kind. I mean, what do you think some of the big advice or components would be the main components of the program? I think we probably hit on them, but just to kind of review is finding a logistical situation.
[00:39:19] That facilitates people coming together comfortably and having some fun activities to do. So I could even see, like at a state park lodge, you could do something like this. university campuses have a lot of cool stuff like recreation centers. And, you know, I think that that's a neat thing that.
[00:39:36] You know, kids can get together and have fun. It's not just sitting, listening to lectures all day long, which I think some of them think that's what this is going to be and really interact on a lot of space. I think having a great group of volunteers is really fantastic. You know, I look at our, our ratio of.
[00:39:55] Counselors and volunteers to campers and they get a lot of attention and I think that's appropriate. you know, you mentioned about the AuD and speech pathology students that we have. if I were creating a program like this and I wasn't associated with the university, I would get myself associated with the university because.
[00:40:13] This is so important for AuD students and SLP students, to be able to see this in action. And they're going to be some of your best, like people, you know, one of our AuD students who's back, he's finishing his PhD. Now. I said to him, jokingly that. I didn't know how we existed last year without him, because he's been such a stalwart for us.
[00:40:35] So, you know, running and getting bottles of water. If you need something like that, having somebody who can take on those roles and counselors is just critical to find, you
know, if, if you don't know young people. With hearing loss at my service counselors, it's very easy to find them because I think they have a passion for wanting to do this, as you said, and then, you know, finding the right group of campers, reaching out to kids, I would love to see us do what I said this or already.
[00:41:03] I would love to see us do more outreach. We have an educational audiologist in Ohio who said to us. Our kids can't come because their families couldn't drive from where we are to Columbus. They couldn't afford to do that. And you and I have talked about, you
know, how might we open that up to getting gas cards or, you know, providing overnight accommodations just for them in a different dorm.
[00:41:23] Cause they can't stay with the kids. you know, what might we do? How might we fund that? So I guess I would always also look at diversity. Not just in terms of device or technology or communication, but in every way that you can, so that we could. So you can impact as many lives as possible. those would probably be the key things that I would think about having somebody fun.
[00:41:46] If you're going to do a camp like this, having somebody fun as a keynote speaker. And one of the things that surprised me is how many people are out there that are in our world. That, you know, have hearing loss or hearing, challenges that are some kind of person that you'd be interested in. You know, one of our former keynote speakers is on the Pittsburgh news.
[00:42:07] She was a former miss Pennsylvania. And, she just posted this incredible thing last week about. She's a cochlear implant user and how masks have been terrible for her. And so she did all this research on masks that was shown on Pittsburgh television that we posted because we wanted people to see Elena.
[00:42:26] But, I think it's amazing that those people are so motivational and exist and are also tied into campUS that they see this as. So that's a great thing for them to be involved in. So if you're looking for people reaching out is pretty easy because I think people want to be involved in your mission.
[00:42:46] It's not as difficult. I shouldn't say that. Cause I think we put a lot of work into this, but it's not as difficult as people seem to think it is that it's an easy mission to sell and it's an easy, it's easy to be involved with it. And if you, if you're involved once. I mean, I've had students, former students say to me, I missed that.
[00:43:04] And I'm always like, you know, you can come back as a volunteer. I don't care. I'm happy to have you, if you're in the area or you want to come in for the weekend, come please come. So I think that it's an easy sell and it's just finding the right people to help you do work with the cell and reaching out.
[00:43:22] Right. And I think like what you said before the, we put a lot of time and energy and effort into it, but what we get out of it is so much more than what we put into it. And like you said, every year, I guess I get renewed on. Being an audiologist and being in the profession that we're in, because I learned so much from everybody involved that I just love what I do even more, every single year we do it.
[00:43:56] We make a great team. We do. And I so appreciate, you know, like I said, at the beginning of this, your dream and me getting to be part of that. And, it's, I felt very sad this year when we didn't get to do it in person. And I'm just, you know, I'm hopes and prayers for next year. That will be all back together in person because, I really was sad in
June because in June when we weren't that usually it's the second weekend in June that we do it.
[00:44:28] And I was like, Oh, I should be at Ohio state late now. In the dorm, right? We couldn't, like you said, hopefully in 2021, we will be back to the ninth year campus. And I just want to thank you Gail, for being a part of this empowEAR audiology podcast. And I just hope all of our listeners who tuned in today. Well, Think about supporting teams who have hearing challenges in one way or another.
[00:45:03] So whether it's a one day thing, whether it's a two hour thing, whether it's an overnight adventure anyway, so that these teens can meet others, they can gain. Leadership skills and advocacy skills, and just really empower themselves to adventure into adulthood. So again, thank you all for being on today.
[00:45:28] And it was, I always love our conversation. All the time. Great to talk to you, Carrie, thank you for the invitation and, hope that people really enjoy hearing about what we're passionate about. So me too. Thank you. You're welcome. This has been a production of the 3C Digital Media Network.