Gebbie Clinic to relocate to South Campus this summer
The Gebbie Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, currently located in the Hoople Special Education Building, will relocate to Syracuse University’s South Campus this summer, in preparation for the fall semester.
The clinic is moving to a new facility because the current clinic is outdated and has not been renovated in several years, said Janet Ford, the director of the clinic. Another reason for the move is the rise in interest and recent growth in the field, she said.
“The new clinic is going to be equipped with state-of-the-art equipment in order to address the evolving changes in our field,” she said. “Our clinic has also grown in terms of the clients that it serves. We’ve grown right out of this clinic.”
The facility serves a dual purpose for SU. Along with providing speech and hearing diagnostics and care, the clinic is also a teaching facility for graduate students at the university, according to the clinic’s website.
The clinic provides educational opportunities for students enrolled in the communication sciences and disorders program. While students often treat patients, they are always supervised by licensed professionals, according to the website.
These students must undergo 400 therapy training hours, all of which are visually recorded for teaching and feedback purposes. But some of the recording equipment is outdated. The clinic will be switching to a digital system at the new facility, Ford said.
“Currently, the system that we use for (recording) is via DVD recording, and often, the player may not work or the sound quality isn’t very good,” Ford said. “So when we’re working on highly specialized things such as acoustic differences, we can’t capture the quality in the current recording system.”
The new facility will have a feature that allows patients to simulate what it would be like to have a hearing aid. Ford explained facility workers will be able to simulate the sounds a patient would hear in certain settings, such as in a restaurant.
“We can tailor the hearing aid specifically to the client’s needs so that they don’t have to go out and then have to complain to us about what is happening,” Ford said. “We’ll be able to make those modifications to the hearing aid right there.”
The one concern surrounding the new clinic is that the location might be isolated from the center of SU’s campus. Located at 621 Skytop Road, the facility is a bus ride away for students on Main Campus, Ford said.
While she realizes it’s a concern, Ford said the positives of the new venue outweigh the negatives.
“The plus side is that since we are a community service, the parking is going to be so much better there,” Ford said. “Many of our clients are elderly and will be able to park right outside of the building. There won’t be that pile during games and things like that when it’s hard to get to Main Campus.”
