ORLANDO—Ron Leavitt, AuD, whose career has spanned a wide range of audiologic activities, will receive the Larry Mauldin Award for Excellence in Education at AudiologyNOW! 2014. The annual convention of the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) will be held March 26-29 in Orlando.
The Mauldin award, which is presented annually by Beltone Electronics, honors the memory of the late Larry Mauldin and celebrates his passionate commitment to advancing knowledge of audiology and hearing aid fittings among as broad an audience as possible. Mauldin Award recipients are nominated and selected by their peers.
Ron Leavitt
Leavitt, who is president of Corvallis Hearing Center in Corvallis, OR, taught many audiologists during his years at the University of Arizona and at Oregon State University (OSU). At Arizona, where he received his master’s degree in audiology, he was an instructor and coordinator of adult and pediatric audiology clinics in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Before going into private practice, the 2014 Mauldin Award recipient spent 10 years as director of the Audiology Clinic and as senior instructor in audiology and American Sign Language in the Department of Audiology and Speech Communication at OSU. He also served on the Grant Review Committee for the Tinnitus Research Program at Oregon Health Science University.
Leavitt, who earned his doctorate from Arizona School of Health Sciences, also practiced for eight years as an audiologist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis.
WRITER, SPEAKER, AND CONSULTANT
Leavitt’s contributions to the education of audiologists have included the publication of scientific articles and textbooks on topics such as hearing aids, earmold acoustics, noise-induced hearing loss, hearing science, and assistive listening technology. He has also made presentations at numerous conferences and seminars on hearing-loss related issues.
As a consultant to the American Bar Association and to the U.S. Forest Service, Leavitt worked to make courtrooms and visitors’ centers accessible to people with hearing loss.
He was also a founder of the Oregon Association for Better Hearing, the nation’s largest hearing aid consumer test group.
PREVIOUS AWARDS
The Mauldin Award is the latest of several honors accorded to Ron Leavitt. While on the faculty at Oregon State University, he received the 1998 Distinguished Service Award from OSU’s Program for Students with Disabilities.
In 2012, he was selected by Rayovac as the Best Audiologist in the Western U.S. The American Academy of Audiology cited an article he wrote as one of the Best Hearing Aid Research Publications of 2012. Last year, he won the Best Hearing Aid Fitting and Validation Award from Audioscan.
