UNC-Chapel Hill Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences Dr. Stephanie Sjoblad was recently awarded the Outstanding Educator Award from the American Academy of Audiology. The award is given by asking colleagues, friends, and mentees in their professional circles to nominate colleagues who deserve recognition for outstanding service to audiology and the hearing sciences.
UNC-Chapel Hill Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences Dr. Stephanie Sjoblad was recently awarded the Outstanding Educator Award from the American Academy of Audiology. The award is given by asking colleagues, friends, and mentees in their professional circles to nominate colleagues who deserve recognition for outstanding service to audiology and the hearing sciences.
Sjoblad started her journey to becoming an audiologist when she was one of three children in her family to be born with congenital hearing loss. She began to wear hearing aids at six years of age and eventually received a cochlear implant (CI) in 2009. She now enjoys a better quality of life with bimodal hearing (one ear has a cochlear implant and the other has a hearing aid).
She joined the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences in August 1999 and currently holds the roles of Professor and Clinic Director. Outside of teaching at UNC, Sjoblad has spent her career promoting more affordable and accessible hearing care to those with hearing loss. In ways to follow her passion, she served on a committee at the National Academies of Science Engineering, and Medicine in D.C., where she helped investigate the Use of Selected Assistive Products and Technologies in Eliminating or Reducing the Effects of Impairments. She served four years on the Executive Board of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology and presently serves on a Practice Accreditation Committee for the Academy of Doctors of Audiology. She has also been involved in her community on the local level, serving eleven years on the Board of Directors for Beginnings for Parents of Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, Inc., and six years of service on the Board for the American Academy of Audiology – North Carolina. She was also a charter member of the North Carolina Audiology Association and served as a Member-at-Large for two years.
“I was surprised to learn that I won! I never thought I would win a national award from the American Academy of Audiology,” said Sjoblad when she found out she was selected.
According to Sjoblad, she knew she was nominated by her former student and colleague Dr. Patricia Johnson, but she was not expecting to win.
“Dr. Johnson can be quite persuasive, but I also knew the field of potential honorees is quite deep,”
Sjoblad was nominated for her unique teaching style. She uses hands-on, role-playing, and somewhat old-fashioned teaching methods to engage her students. She also has a semester-long business plan project that students develop in her Business Practices in Audiology class. Several students have gone on to win a national award for the business plan they created in her class. Not every student is a fan of learning about business in a clinical degree program, but once they have their careers, Sjoblad says that she hears from her former students thanking her for all she taught them.
“I believe one learns best by doing. I’m not a huge fan of rubrics, because life doesn’t have rubrics. Sometimes my teaching strategies will earn a less-than-stellar evaluation. Students don’t always know what they don’t know. However, it’s not uncommon for students to reach out later to thank me for pushing them to learn to think for themselves.”
Along with her teaching methods, Sjoblad says that her successes as an educator, including winning this award, are because of her colleagues and her students.
“My successes are connected to the great team of colleagues I’ve been blessed to work with all these years. I’m also fortunate that I can teach bright students who come to Carolina engaged and ready to learn.”
