HESP Professor Matthew Goupell Named Distinguished Scholar-Teacher
Matthew Goupell, a Professor in the University of Maryland Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (HESP), was recently named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the UMD Office of Faculty Affairs. The Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award is presented each year to a select few senior, tenured faculty members who demonstrate excellence in teaching and scholarship.
“Being selected as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher is an incredible honor. It is humbling to think that only six professors are typically chosen from the 4,000-member University of Maryland faculty each year,” he said. “There are many ways that research excellence is highlighted, but there is something special about combining that with teaching excellence.”
As a scholar, Goupell has had a significant impact on the hearing and speech sciences field, using a combination of physics, engineering, physiology, and psychology to have a particularly powerful impact on individuals who use cochlear implants—the neuroprostheses that partially restore hearing to those with moderate to profound hearing loss.
He is the principal investigator of the Auditory Perception & Modeling Lab, which is currently working on research projects related to the benefits of having two cochlear implants, how cochlear implants can be improved to better understand where noise and sounds are coming from, and how aging impacts the brain’s ability to interpret sound over time. And, Goupell is the co-director of the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, which combines the research, audiology training, and speech-language pathology strengths of the University of Maryland, College Park with the surgical and clinical expertise of the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Medicine to create a premier institution for educational training, clinical services, and biomedical research on cochlear implants.
As a teacher, Goupell has led multiple upper-level classes, including “Bases of Hearing Science,” “Psychoacoustics,” “Anatomy and Physiology of the Auditory and Vestibular Systems,” and more. In his graduate-level anatomy and physiology class, Goupell creatively incorporates a role-playing adventure, complete with 20-sided dice, in which students try to survive a zombie apocalypse using creativity, cunning, and what they have learned about the auditory system.
He also serves as the co-principal investigator of UMD Research Equity and Access in Communication and Hearing (UMD-REACH) program, a new, yearlong program that provides up to 12 students who are underrepresented—on the basis of race, ethnicity, disability, or who come from first-generation and/or low-income backgrounds—with the opportunity to get paid to work in research labs alongside UMD faculty mentors.
“Dr. Goupell absolutely exemplifies what it means to be a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher,” said Samira Anderson, HESP Professor and Chair. “During the pandemic, he instituted creative methods to encourage active learning in his students, and he continued using these engaging strategies after returning to in-person teaching. His students greatly benefit from these approaches when trying to understand the abstract concepts in his courses.”
Distinguished Scholar-Teachers deliver a lecture on the topic of their choice following their appointment. Goupell will deliver his Distinguished Scholar-Teacher talk, “A multi-disciplinary approach to studying human hearing: Physics, Physiology, Perception, Prostheses, Zombies …” on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. The talk will detail his research in cochlear implants, and the role-playing adventure of his graduate-level anatomy and physiology course.
The talk will take place in Room 2208 of the Edward St. John Learning & Teaching Center.
To register for Goupell’s Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Talk, email maardita@umd.edu by October 4, 2024.
Published on Tue, Sep 17, 2024 - 3:25PM