Faculty Focus: Victor Bray, MSC, PhD, FNAP

Every place Victor Bray, MSC, PhD, FNAP, has ever lived he’s transformed the yard into something that’s beautiful and enjoyable. As a gardener, it’s clear to him when working with plants, they need different amounts of sunlight, certain temperatures, amounts of water and types of soil to survive and thrive.

That’s not unlike how Dr. Bray, associate professor in the University’s Osborne College of Audiology (OCA) — and former dean of the College and director of the Pennsylvania Ear Institute (PEI) — approached management of employees.

“The thing is, once you take the ownership of the plant, it now becomes individualized care and your responsibility,” said Dr. Bray. “It’s the job of the administrator to give the faculty and staff individualized nurturing to help them grow and prosper.”

It’s a humanistic approach to management.

“The implementation plan in management is the analogy that every plant will grow and prosper, provided the environment is fostering. The same is true with employees and the manager's job is to help create an environment fostering success,” he said.

“However, this really can't be done with students in lecture as the students are in a lock-step program whereby some kind of standardized approach has to be implemented.”

His approach with students is built around a Study Skills course he has offered for many years to incoming students and in 2021, for the first time, in the Post-baccalaureate Program in Health Sciences.

According to Dr. Bray, there are seven core skills to success as a student: time management, pre-reading, reading and note making, reviewing and self-testing, concentration, test-taking strategies, and overcoming test anxiety.

“As a lecturer, I utilize repeated exposure to the course materials with pre-exam exercises, exams, post-exam reviews, and individualized reviews as requested by students,” he said. “This repeated exposure approach minimizes the need to “cram for exams” and helps the student transfer course information from short-term memorization into long-term storage supporting recall as needed in the labs and in the clinic.”

It was a challenging set of circumstances that brought Dr. Bray to Salus in 2009. Because of the untimely death of OCA’s founder, George S. Osborne, in 2007, the OCA needed a dean. Dr. Bray was recruited for the job by Anthony Di Stefano, OD ‘73 MEd, MPH, FAAO, then the vice president of Academic Affairs at the University. One of the questions Dr. Di Stefano asked was about Dr. Bray’s management style.

“I believe everybody can excel and a leader’s job is to try to get to know the people who you work with, especially the ones you’re managing,” said Dr. Bray. “Get an understanding of them, their skills, their talent, their desires, their motivations and see if you can align their work assignments with their natural areas of excellence.”

He added another way of saying that is to follow your bliss.

“It helps if when you’re trying to follow your bliss that you have a manager who is trying to help you get there,” he said.

Dr. Bray would eventually step back in 2016 from his administrative duties as dean and clinic director and assume a faculty position. These days, in addition to teaching, he is heavily involved with leadership in the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA). For 20 years, the profession has been working on legislative changes to improve the position of audiology within the healthcare hierarchy.

“There are three major pieces of audiology legislation that are in play and I work with my colleagues at the ADA every day on this,” he said. “It’s about watching the language as it’s written and trying to shepherd in language that advances our causes.”

He calls advocacy for the profession a particular passion for him now.

“The legislation that’s under consideration in Washington is built around improving access to audiology services and the affordability of hearing devices,” as he described the proposed Medicare Audiology Access and Services Act (MAASA), which improves access to audiology for Medicare beneficiaries. The proposed Medicare hearing services would provide devices to persons with severe and profound hearing loss. The Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act is being implemented this year and will improve access to devices for persons with mild and moderate hearing loss.

“It was decades ago when I got my audiology degree and essentially, the scope of practice at the state level has not moved since then, nor has access to hearing devices at the national level” he said. “And, it’s time now, because the profession has transitioned to the doctoral degree and audiologists are prepared now to take on more responsibility.”

He thinks those in leadership roles who are in advocacy can get changes accomplished, which means a much better future for graduates because they will be able to practice at a higher level with their patients.

During his tenure at Salus, Dr. Bray first focused on the on-campus program and hired faculty, expanded PEI, doubled the class size and tripled the program size. He helped launch the University's second-generation online AuD Bridge Program, with a focus on international students, including the new Hands on Workshops (HOW) that have been hosted on campus and internationally. 

Along with the establishment of three online graduate certificate specialization programs for working audiologists – worldwide – which are very unique in the profession’s educational offerings, Dr. Bray was also helped lay the foundation for the online Master of Clinical Science degree in AuD, again focusing on international students. 

As founder of the Audiology Academy within the National Academies of Practice and Audiology (NAP) and then serving four years on NAP’s executive team, Dr. Bray’s work brought recognition and honor to the University and OCA.  In 2020, Dr. Bray was awarded the University’s Presidential Medal of Honor for his dedication to the profession of audiology. In addition, in PEI’s Elkins Park, Pennsylvania waiting room, Dr. Bray’s personal collection of hearing device equipment, technology spanning 150 years, is on display.

He’s been proud to be a part of the OCA administration and faculty during his time at Salus and that a goal of the program is to help students find a place where they can excel.

“That’s a core part of the program, to help the students find those spots,” he said. “We know that our graduates are great clinicians and they will be our future leaders. And, it’s wonderful.”

As for what the future holds, Dr. Bray reluctantly admits that he’s old enough to start looking at how long he’s going to continue in academia.

“I wish I knew how long my mind and my body are going to hold up to support what I want to do. And, that’s a big unknown,” he said. “But, if either one of them fails and I can’t perform at my level of expectation, then you have to be prepared to step down and let other people step in.”

When it is time to retire, it will come as no surprise that Dr. Bray would like to spend more time in his yard, tending to and nurturing his plants, in addition to pursuing a few other hobbies that have been put on the back burner in recent years.

“I’ll try to find a little more balance in life,” he said. “When you’re in an environment like this and there’s so many opportunities in teaching, scholarship, service, working with the students and faculty and profession, it’s an opportunity-rich environment to do things. If you’re interested, you can give it your whole life.”