Chair's Message - Winter/Spring 2008
By Mary M. McDaniel, AuD CCC-A CPS/A
When I was a young girl in grade school, we asked our friends, teachers, relatives, and anyone else who could hold a pencil to sign our autograph book. Typically a short poem was written along with lots of squiggles and curly-cues above the signer’s name. One poem, although a tad corn-ball by today’s standards, has always stayed with me:
Good, better, best....Never let it rest....Until the good is better, and the better best!
Now here I am, many years later, and that corny little rhyme is vivid in my mind and it still rings true. Ah the good old days!
You’ve heard it here before.....CAOHC - there is no equal. That being said, it’s important for you to know that CAOHC is not resting on its laurels. Our goal is to continue to make the good better and the better best!
This past November, in addition to our annual face-to-face board meeting, we conducted a strategic planning session to help us focus our future initiatives. It was an interesting exercise with some valuable outcomes. Most importantly, we agreed that our primary focus continues to be the presentation of excellent educational programming. The two courses that are offered by CAOHC are the Course Director workshop and the Professional Supervisor workshop. These two courses train the individuals who are actually out in the world training OHCs in CAOHC initial and recertification courses, as well as those who are supervising the audiometric testing portion of a company’s hearing conservation program.
CAOHC strives to meet and exceed our already high standards for the two workshops it offers and will continue to do so in the future. As a result of our strategic planning session, we are considering distance learning. CAOHC wants to be responsive to the needs of our Course Directors and Professional Supervisors. We value the importance of face time, but also wish to be respectful of time demands on everyone involved in hearing conservation. Therefore, we will be examining how we can continue to maintain our high standards while providing options for delivery. Please stay tuned! It’s going to take some time for us to get it right, but we’ve heard you and more importantly, we’ve listened.
The other focused initiative to come from our strategic planning session was in the area of quality assurance. In order for CAOHC to promote excellence, we monitor the quality of the courses that are being provided and subsequently hold the CD responsible for concerns or curriculum violations. We have done this by evaluating the information and feedback provided by the OHC at the conclusion of the course. This system has quirks and we’re prepared to tackle the work required to make it better. Again, this will take time, but your comments and input will always be welcomed. Please contact the CAOHC office and feel free to direct your comments, questions or suggestions to me. I look forward to hearing from you.