How one student's hearing loss led her on a path to independent study, research and academic pursuits.

LIFE AND STUDIES COALESCE FOR MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE

BY SYLVIA A. MARTINEZ

It was the beginning of one of her favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers' songs that led to Montclair State University graduate, Evyn Stewart '22's hearing test and unilateral hearing loss diagnosis, at a young age.

Stewart, who was 8 or 9 at the time, says much of the diagnosis went over her head, but she recalls what led up to it: She was listening to “Slow Cheetah” in the car when her father cranked up the volume.

“I didn’t know that the lead singer had said a little blurb in the beginning of the song, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so strange,’” she says.

A hearing test revealed hearing loss in her left ear. "After that hearing test, it made perfect sense why I would be missing that part of the song at a certain volume, because I was missing the low end and the high end of certain frequencies on the audiogram.''

That song, diagnosis, and decades of visits to an ear, nose and throat doctor and audiologist, led Stewart to an independent study in Montclair's Communication Sciences and Disorders department this semester – as an undergraduate in a graduate-level lab.

A Linguistics major in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Stewart worked in Montclair's Communication Sciences and Disorders Clinical Biofeedback Lab, also known as MSU-CBL, studying adolescents with unilateral hearing loss, and presented her research findings at the New Jersey Speech, Language and Hearing Association's Annual Convention in April.

The 21-year-old tackled the study with the same grit and grace – and a good dose of humor – with which she handles her hearing loss. Stewart has seen her pediatric ENT since she was two. She suf-

A SOUND COLLABORATION: Evyn consults with Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders Elaine Hitchcock in the biofeedback lab, where the Montclair senior conducted her independent study.