Award 2024

OPTOMETRIST OF THE YEAR 2024 AWARD

SUSAN COTTER

Susan Cotter, is a professor at the Southern California College of Optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University. She is a pediatric optometrist and clinical scientist with primary research interests related to clinical management strategies for amblyopia, strabismus, convergence insufficiency, and pediatric refractive error. She is the co-chair of the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group (PEDIG), a clinical research network of more than 350 pediatric optometrists and ophthalmologists funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute (NIH/NEI), conducting clinical research related to pediatric eye disorders. She has held leadership roles for various large-scale NEI-funded studies: the Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study (MEPEDS), the Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Ethnic Refractive Error (CLEERE), the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial (CITT), and the CITT-Attention and Reading Trial (CITT-ART).

She began her presidency of the Academy of Optometry in November 2022. She is also part of the Scientific Office of the World Society of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (WSPOS) and recently served as co-chair of the Public Health and Disparities Research Panel for the NEI's Future Strategic Plan (2021-2025).

Additionally, she has received numerous teaching awards, such as the California Optometric Association's Excellence in Optometric Education Award, Women in Optometry's Theia Award of Excellence in Education, and Faculty of the Year for 18 third-year optometry classes. Sue is board-certified in binocular vision, perception, and pediatric optometry and is a member of the COVD. She is a former Ezell Fellow of the American Optometric Foundation (AOF) and the 2019 recipient of the Glenn A. Fry Lecture Award from the Academy.

A graduate of the Illinois College of Optometry, Sue completed a pediatric vision residency at SCCO and received a master's degree in clinical and biomedical investigations from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She is the editor of the textbook "Clinical Applications of Prisms" and lectures internationally in the areas of pediatric eye care and binocular vision.