Bio

Dr. Jane R. Madell is a clinician, researcher, and educator. As a clinician, she is a certified audiologist, speech-language pathologist, a listening and spoken language specialist, and an auditory verbal therapist. For about 50 years, she has single-mindedly dedicated her career to helping children with hearing impairment and other auditory disorders (including auditory processing, auditory attention disorders, and sound hypersensitivity). She was the director of audiology at the New York League for the Hard of Hearing (now the Center for Hearing and Communication) and the director of the Hearing and Learning Center and co-director of the Cochlear Implant Center at Beth Israel Medical Center/New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Under her leadership, these world-renowned centers for pediatric audiology became models for family-centered integrated care providing support, rehabilitation, and education services for families and children alike. As an educator, Jane Madell has held faculty positions at University of Tennessee, Teachers College Columbia University, and State University of New York Health Sciences, and is presently a professor at New York Medical College and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. As a researcher, she has published five books, authored or co-authored numerous chapters, peer-reviewed papers, and developed online and magazine articles.

Recently Jane has ventured into new territory: she is in the process of finalizing a documentary film titled, “The Listening Project.” In it, she explores the value of hearing technology in the lives of some of her previous patients, now in their 20s and 30s, whose hearing loss she identified when they were infants or young children.

On her website (www.janemadell.com), Jane shares her philosophy. She says, “I believe children with hearing loss have the ability to learn to use hearing to develop a spoken language. I also believe that every child is testable – no matter the age or degree of other disabilities. With proper management, most children with hearing loss can be educated in the mainstream along with their typical-hearing peers.”

Jane Madell has clearly lived by these words through her dedicated practice in the evaluation and management of hearing in infants and young children with hearing loss and auditory disorders, and by providing them with the most appropriate form of amplification, assistive technologies, and supportive family-centered auditory rehabilitation and therapies.

The Marion Downs Award for Excellence in Pediatric Audiology is awarded to an audiologist for his or her exceptional contributions to pediatric audiology; contributions that have made an impact on the profession of audiology as a whole. Jane Madell, without a doubt, meets these criteria and is a truly worthy recipient of this award.