Expanding Our Reach in the Community
Audiologist Michael Bergen is the director of the Speech and Hearing Center at Brooklyn College, one of the oldest clinics in the U.S., which opened even before the college did. A year ago it was rededicated and renamed for BC alum Diana Rogovin Davidow (’66), who donated  more than a million dollars to modernize it.
     “Acts like those help us continue providing the top quality educational and clinical training the students in our doctoral programs need,” Bergen says, explaining that there are only two CUNY colleges that offer the doctoral program for the entire system. (The other is Hunter College.)
     Like the clinic’s namesake benefactor, Bergen is a BC alumnus who started teaching here as soon as he got his MS in Audiology in 1994. He’s been the center’s director since 2003. “We have a thriving clinic with state-of-the-art equipment that helps us serve the students and the community.”
     The center’s team of professionals provides diagnostic and rehabilitative services for people of all ages with speech, language, and hearing disorders. Nearly five thousand patients visit the center each year.
     Bergen’s efforts reach even farther: as Vice President of the New York State Speech, Language, and Hearing Association, which represents 12,000 speech and language pathologists and audiologists, Bergen helps coordinate lobbying efforts, and organize members to contact legislators to stop

Director Bergen testing a hearing aids with MS candidate Helena Pilosova in one of the center's soundproof rooms.

budgetary cuts that hurt the professionals’ ability to pursue early intervention among patients that are on Medicare or Medicaid, and to make sure there are cost of living adjustments for practitioners. Although his is a non-salaried elected position, his responsibilities include organizing the association’s four-day conference every year.
     Bergen received an award from his association during its April 2008 convention. To him, this can only mean that he is expected to continue his job of looking out for his fellow professionals and the people they serve.
     “We have to do a better job in recruitment and retention of underrepresented social and ethnic groups on either profession,” Bergen says. “The bigger the diversity of our colleagues the bigger our reach in the community,” he adds, explaining that it is crucial to reach across society to identify problems at an early stage and provide the right prognosis and therapy, and avoid unnecessary surgery.
     “We have to double our efforts.”