Two university faculty members, both certified audiologists, are the first to study how tinnitus affects student veterans as they navigate college classrooms. Hearing loss and tinnitus are the two most common service-related disabilities among U.S. veterans, affecting more than 3 million people nationwide.
Because military service members are routinely exposed to noise that can cause lasting auditory damage and make school harder for active-duty personnel and student veterans, Karen Doherty, senior associate dean for faculty affairs and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Tammy Kordas, associate teaching professor also in CSD, set out to learn how tinnitus may be affecting veteran students on campus.
When the two certified audiologists initially looked for existing research on the prevalence of tinnitus—a ringing or other noise in the ears that isn't caused by external sound—among veterans on college campuses, they found almost nothing.
So they, along with two of their doctoral students, Marissa Merrifield and Joshua Deus, surveyed service members and veterans currently enrolled at Syracuse University to explore the relationship between self-perceived hearing difficulty, listening fatigue and tinnitus severity.
