Orientation and Mobility
Division
The
Presentation to
Dona Sauerburger, COMS®
July 15, 2004
n
Award
Presentation
by
Bill Wiener, COMS®
Today the Orientation and Mobility
Division is presenting the Laurence E. Blaha Award to
Dona Sauerburger for her untiring devotion to the
field of Orientation and Mobility. Those
of us who regularly check the O&M listserv have come to know Dona as a
frequent contributor. In fact she has
affectionately been called the “Queen of the listserv.” On any given day, she will respond to
question after question. When she
doesn’t know the answer, she will go offline to contact others who may know the
answer. She has made it her mission to
serve as a mentor to so many of our members.
What you may not know is that Dona has had one of the most distinguished
careers in our field.
Dona has spent the past 34 years serving the
profession of orientation and mobility.
She has worked with both children and adults in school settings,
agencies, and in the community. Throughout her career Dona has held traditional
positions as well as serving as an independent contractor. In the early 1970's she developed and
implemented some of the first O&M programs in
As one of the few O&M specialists with
specialized knowledge on deaf‑blindness, Dona shared her knowledge freely
with her colleagues. In 1993 she wrote a
book entitled
Dona has also devoted much of her time to
developing new techniques to address the safety of visually impaired
travelers. Faced with evidence that
blind people have difficulty crossing streets that do not have traffic control,
she developed a timing procedure that assisted with the determination of
whether it’s possible to know when it’s clear to cross. Once developed, she shared her insights with
her peers through various venues such as publications and presentations. Beginning in 1989 she wrote “To cross or not
to cross: Objective timing methods of assessing street crossings without
traffic controls,” published in RE:view. In 1995, 1996, 1998, and again in 1999 she
wrote articles that further developed the concept of how to consider crossings
without traffic controls. Her approaches
to these issues have been broadly recognized and have impacted the content of
many of our university programs.
Dona has given much of her time and energy
in service to the field. She has
provided her editing skills to a number of newsletters that have benefited the
profession. From 1992 to the present
time, with a short hiatus between 1996 and 2000, she served as the editor of
newsletter for O&M Division of AER.
It is through her efforts that the Division has shared the progress of
its different committees and prepared the membership to vote on many new
policies. She has similarly worked as
the editor of the newsletter of the Mid‑Atlantic Region of AER, the
newsletter of the Metropolitan Washington O&M Association, the newsletter
for DC‑MD Chapter AER, and the newsletter of the Metropolitan Washington
Association of the Deaf‑Blind. She
has even functioned as a columnist for “Moving Right Along,” published in Deaf‑Blind
American, the quarterly magazine of the American Association of the Deaf‑Blind.
Another source of service to the
profession has been through her leadership to the O&M Division. She has served on such committees as the
Environmental Access Committee, Professional Standards Committee, Finance
Committee, Certification Standards Committee, Functional Abilities Assessment
Subcommittee, and the Archives Committee.
As co‑chair of the Archives Committee, she was instrumental in
developing the O&M Division Archives.
In 1998 Dona began serving as Chair of the O&M Division. During this time she reviewed all of the past policies of the Division and worked with the Executive Committee to develop their first policy manual. Today the decisions that are made by the O&M Division follow the procedures outlined in the manual developed during her tenure as president.
Finally, Dona often works from behind the
scenes to make sure that issues relating to Orientation and Mobility and the
O&M Division are given the necessary consideration. As an example, at the last AER biennial
conference she helped write several resolutions that address critical issues to
the field. Another example occurred in
November of 2002 when the Rehabilitation Services Administration sponsored a
program on cutting-edge practices in O&M.
When Dona recognized that blindfolding would be presented as a cutting
edge practice but not the use of low vision, she immediately agreed to develop
a presentation that would address the important topic of use of residual vision. Her hand is often found in the organizational
efforts of the O&M Division. Nowhere
has this been more evident than in the New Orleans Orientation and Mobility
Division Conference. She worked
tirelessly to help organize this conference and make sure that it considered
topics of importance to the field.
Many practitioners within the field have
had the opportunity of learning from Dona Sauerburger’s
experiences. She has given more than 40
presentations at venues from regional O&M conferences to international
O&M conferences. And of course she
has taken an untiring interest in monitoring the listserv and helping those
with questions. She has become a
dependable source of up‑to‑date information on various topics of
importance.
Dona is most proud that as a
practitioner she was able to contribute so much to the profession. Often practitioners believe that you must be
an administrator or a university instructor to make a substantive
contribution. Dona Sauerburger’s
example teaches us the contrary. Dona
has worked over the years in many venues to create best practice.
For all of these accomplishments, the
O&M Division is bestowing the highest honor it can give to one of its
members: the Lawrence E. Blaha Award.
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