Faculty, student and staff volunteers from the UT Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders will conduct hearing screenings for hundreds of participants in the 2008 Special Olympics Texas summer games.
The games, which give individuals with intellectual disabilities the chance to engage in athletic training and competition, will be held on the UT Arlington campus May 22-25.
The Callier Center has provided the audiological component of the Special Olympics “Healthy Athletes” program since 2002, and more than 2,500 athletes have received hearing screenings.
Because hearing needs are often overlooked in this special population, volunteers from Callier, who number more than 30, will staff an exam area throughout the games to conduct free hearing tests and inform the athletes and their coaches of the results. Athletes may also undergo vision and physical fitness testing available from other providers.
Among the Callier volunteers will be audiologists, audiology professors and graduate students and staff members. Cindy MacArthur, audiologist for the Callier Center, tells her students “that on these days, we will work hard, but we will also have fun. It can be a life-changing experience.”
Some 3,400 athletes from around the state are expected to take part in the 2008 summer games. Additional information about the games is available at the Special Olympics Texas website, http://www.sotx.org/.
The Callier Center, with locations in Dallas and on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson, is one of the nation’s preeminent educational, research and treatment centers focused on communication and communication disorders.
The center is part of the university’s School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Media contact: Debra Brown, UT Dallas, (214) 905-3049, debra@utdallas.edu
and the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, newscenter@utdallas.edu