From Literaturnaya Gazeta (Moscow, Russia), #13, April 3-9, 2002, page 13
By Andrey Tarasov
The fate of thousands of Russian people doomed by nature to be invalids was decided at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU), and it was decided for the better.
We are once again at the Moscow Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation of the Deaf, organized at the famous Bauman University. In its Scientific Section, Literaturnaya Gazeta has already reported about this unique teaching complex, with laboratories and computer facilities having special equipment that would be the envy of students with perfectly normal hearing. Two hundred hard-of-hearing students, some of them completely deaf, can be called lucky for having been selected to attend Bauman from among a huge number of the country's invalids who are deprived of this opportunity. It is precisely for this reason that authoritative partners in this field have recently come to the Center to initiate international cooperation. Their aim is to create a worldwide post-secondary education network for people who are handicapped by nature.
With this humane and socially needed aim, a remarkable memorandum regarding the participation of Moscow State Technical University in the PEN-International project was signed at the Rector's office. The PEN network, created in 2001, has its headquarters at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in the USA. It is one of eight colleges of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), NY, the world's first and largest technical college for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Thanks to this college, 1100 such students from all over the world live and communicate with 13,500 regular students of RIT.
A delegation of the American partners included the leading specialists and managers of RIT and its specialized college: Dr. James DeCaro (PEN Director); Dr. Robert Davila (RIT Vice-President and NTID Director, who, being deaf, by his own example showed how this disability can be overcome and who set many people on the right path); Maria Shustorovich, Professor of Mathematics at NTID (coordinator of the PEN project for Russia), and others. They all highly valued the participation of Russia's leading technical university in this very much needed international project and said that the Rehabilitation Center, organized at the Bauman University with the assistance of the Moscow Government, is a model institution to be emulated in the entire country.
Igor Fedorov, Rector of BMSTU, introduced the various university colleagues at the ceremony and two other highly interested parties, the managers of the All-Russian and the Moscow Society of the Deaf, whose members should receive full-fledged professional and social adaptation in the modern world with help of this international project. At BMSTU, deaf students have been studying since 1934. As time went on, the training methods kept improving and now the Center is up to the highest standards of excellence.
This means that such national leaders as NTID and BMSTU can and must become locomotives in the satellite-type approach to addressing this highly acute social problem. Reizo Utagawa, Director of the Nippon Foundation, reinforced this at the signing ceremony. Until recently this Japanese foundation has granted scholarships to deaf students of underdeveloped countries for studying abroad at the leading world universities. Now, the Foundation finances the PEN-International program, which helps such students receive a high-quality university education in their own countries. "It is inspiring that in Russia, too, a significant step has been made to help people with physical disabilities. I have visited the Center for Education and Adaptation of the Deaf at the Bauman University and can say that it is wonderful. Like NTID, BMSTU now has a key role to play in realizing an unprecedented program in developing an international network. It is the second year of the PEN project, in which the United States, Japan and now Russia are sharing their experience."
Another participant of the PEN program is the Tsukuba College of Technology (TCT) of Japan, a unique three-year national college founded in 1987 for students with poor hearing or eyesight. The department for hard-of-hearing students provides up-to-date training in design engineering, machine building, architecture, electronics and information technologies for more than 200 students. In China the PEN project has already been joined by the Tianjin Technical College for the Deaf of Tianjin University of Technology. This college, founded in 1991, is the first institution of tertiary technological education for the deaf in China. It provides training in machine building, computer engineering, administrative information systems, and clothing design and manufacturing.
Along with BMSTU, the PEN project will be joined this year by the College of St. Benilde in the Philippines and by the Charles University in the Czech Republic, the oldest university of Central Europe. Its history dates back to 1348, and now this independent university enrolls over 45 thousand students, including over 20 deaf students majoring in the areas of "Linguistics".
Thus, the beginning has been made, and this is a realistic chance to restore social and professional justice to those who were handicapped by nature, and not for only a few dozens but for many thousands of our contemporaries, speaking different languages. This was convincingly expressed by the head of the Bauman Center, Professor Alexander Stanevsky, whose outstanding organizational work was praised by all those present at the ceremony. "It depends on us whether deaf people will enter this world with a hand stretched out for begging or with a hand stretched out for partnership. They deserve a life of full social, professional, and creative activity and the project's participants will do their best to dramatically help in this."
