Honoring the Contributions of Pat Stelmachowicz to the Field of Pediatric Audiology

Pat Stelmachowicz, Ph.D.

My first encounter with Dr. Pat Stelmachowicz was during my first week in an audiology clinical placement at Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) during my graduate program over 20 years ago. I was sitting at the lunch table with much of the audiology staff, still trying to figure out how I had managed to land a clinical placement at such an amazing place with so many people who cared about pediatric audiology. Pat came into the room and started asking the clinical audiologists questions about how they were fitting hearing aids for children who were coming into the clinic. I assumed from the interaction that Pat was another audiologist on staff that I had yet to meet, as there were nearly 20 on staff at the time. I had no idea that I was having lunch with a leading scientist in pediatric audiology who had created an environment that would allow clinical audiologists to actively engage in research to support our patients. This very first interaction with Pat exemplified the qualities that made her a great mentor to many audiologists and scientists.

Pat was first and foremost an audiologist. At the point that I met Pat for the first time, she had been working as a scientist and leading the audiology program at Boys Town for almost two decades. Pat's laboratory and office were in the audiology department, and she would engage in daily conversations with those of us who were seeing patients about our thoughts and experiences. Our clinical insights were often reflected in Pat's research papers and new experiments. Her team always knew that her door was open to ask questions or throw out ideas. These interactions exemplified Pat's intellectual curiosity and commitment to ensuring her research would have a positive impact on the children and adults with hearing loss that we served. Even at the end of her career, Pat was committed to doing research that would help audiologists and their patients.

Pat also exemplified humility. There was no hierarchy when it came to discussions about science or pediatric audiology. Students and trainees were often highly regarded for their recent training and knowledge. Even as a clinical fellow working in the Audiology Department at BTNRH, Pat would often ask if I had read a specific article or whether I thought an experiment she was planning sounded like it would yield something useful. Pat viewed clinicians as collaborators, and some of her most-cited publications were co-authored by her clinical colleagues or heavily influenced by these hallway interactions and staff discussions.

This issue of Seminars in Hearing contains original research and reviews on topics related to Pat Stelmachowicz's research in pediatric audiology and hearing science contributed by people who Pat mentored or were influenced by her research. Although we lost Pat in early 2021, her contributions to the field continue through the work of her collaborators throughout the field. Dr. Elizabeth Walker, who collaborated with Pat as part of the landmark Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss Consortium, has provided a comprehensive review of Pat's research contributions to the intersection of hearing loss and language. Although Pat was an audiologist, her collaborations with colleagues in language sciences broadened the impact of her research to helping us understand that there were cumulative effects on speech and language that could be influenced by a child's auditory experience through their hearing aids. In that same vein, Dr. Kathryn Wiseman and I have contributed a review that describes Pat's influence on how we quantify a child's auditory access, from measures based on the pure-tone audiogram to our current applications of the speech intelligibility index and cumulative measures of a child's auditory experience.

Although Pat Stelmachowicz was known for her work in audiology, she also made methodological contributions to how we measure speech recognition in children. A paper describing Pat's influence on speech recognition and developmental psychoacoustics from Drs. Lori Leibold, Lauren Calandruccio, and Emily Buss highlights how research contributions that may seem basic or not clinically relevant can support advances in clinical practice. The test of speech recognition that was developed by this team to assess speech perception in children who speak English or Spanish was heavily influenced by Pat's research and commitment to assessing outcomes in children who wear hearing aids.

Pat mentored several clinical audiologists who went on to pursue second careers as research scientists, including Dr. Dawna Lewis. Dr. Lewis was hired by Pat over 40 years ago as a clinical audiologist who then went on to pursue a Ph.D. and work as a scientist collaborating with Pat until her retirement. Dr. Lewis's contribution describing the unique listening challenges of children with mild bilateral and unilateral hearing losses in laboratory settings designed to mimic realistic listening situations is another example of Pat's mentorship and support of clinical-translational researchers.

Similarly, the contributed paper from Dr. Lisa Davidson and her colleagues examines the assumptions of the familiar sounds audiogram that is often used to counsel parents of children with hearing loss about the impacts of hearing loss on language and communication. Pat was always willing to challenge or reexamine existing ideas or approaches, and the results of this contribution to the issue suggest that there are improvements that could be made to make the familiar sounds audiogram more consistent and reflective of the challenges children experience in their communication.

One of Pat's most widely recognized contributions to the field was her work demonstrating the importance of high-frequency bandwidth on speech recognition, word learning, and language development in children. The original research article by Dr. Brian Monson is an example of how this line of research has been extended into new directions for predicting speech recognition in background noise in ways that might not be captured by current models of speech perception.

The work and career of Dr. Pat Stelmachowicz continues to influence the field of pediatric audiology, and her research will live on through the continued clinical-translation research by her mentors and collaborators. We hope that this issue of Seminars in Hearing inspires continued collaboration between clinical audiologists and hearing researchers to tackle important questions that can improve the lives of children and adults who have hearing loss.

Publication History

Article published online:
22 March 2023