Currently viewing Vol. 9 • Issue 4 • 2022

The meaning of Susan Scollie [ska:li]

This page as PDF

The verb “to Scollie” is defined in the Dictionary of Seewald Language (DSL) as “to get things done” as in ‘will you please Scollie this article for me?’. The implication is that Susan Scollie will correct any errors in the article and do it quickly without hesitation. The etymology is not clear but it is possible that “Scollie” derives from the Latin word skollus (second declension), meaning “getting things done” (circa 2nd century), with alternative spellings in some early texts including Dante’s Paradiso of “skoly” and later, “scoli.”

The noun “Scollie” however, is much more difficult to define. Susan Scollie is a mentor, a friend, a researcher, a thinker, and a doer in the field of pediatric audiology. And Susan is a dedicated educator and coach for early-career Audiologists. There is some debate on whether “to Scollie” in its infinitive form is a cognate variant of “to Seewald” but it is thought that, while these two terms are related and have many similar properties, they have different meanings. Linguistic scholars feel that Scollie is a more recent term, although both can be used interchangeably in most syntactic and semantic situations.

Susan receiving the Marion Downes Award.
Susan receiving the Western Teaching Award.

This issue of CanadianAudiologist.ca is proud to be able to celebrate the life’s achievements of Dr. Susan Scollie.  When her colleagues were surreptitiously asked to contribute an article, they only had to be asked once before immediately agreeing. Of course, they needed a bit of reminding from time to time; after all, they are mostly academics and, I suspect, may have a few other things on their plates.

Years ago, as a community-based audiologist, I was asked to write a letter to Susan’s Dean when she came up for tenure, it was the shortest letter I could have written. Instead of writing reams about her accomplishments (which would have been easy to do), I essentially said that she should receive tenure and why you are asking me such an obvious and stupid question. Not sure that her Dean liked that, but she did receive tenure!

So, read on to see what her many colleagues think of her. Thank you Susan, for who you are and what you do. You are very much loved and respected.

Marshall Chasin, AuD., Editor in Chief
Steve Aiken, PhD, Associate Editor.

CanadianAudiologist.ca

About the Editor in Chief
Marshall Chasin, AuD

Marshall Chasin, AuD, Doctor of Audiology, Editor in Chief

Marshall is the director of research at the Musicians' Clinics of Canada and has presented and published extensively on the topics of hearing loss prevention in musicians and hearing aids for music.

Other than being the editor in chief of Canadian Audiologist, Marshall Chasin writes a regular column in the Hearing Review called Back to Basics. Some of these columns are reprinted in this issue of Canadian Audiologist with permission of the Hearing Review.

Steve Aiken, PhD

Steve Aiken is an associate professor at the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the Departments of Surgery, Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University. He received a master’s degree in Audiology from the University of Western Ontario and a PhD in Medical Science from the University of Toronto. He is a past-president of the Canadian Academy of Audiology, founder of the Canadian Infant Hearing Task Force, associate editor of Canadian Audiologist, and co-chair of the Canadian Hearing and Auditory Research Translation group.