From the NTID President's Office

Last month, we shared information about NTID’s updated Antiracism and Social Justice Plan website, and this month, we want to point out a feature of the website that members of our community may find useful. We have color-coded each action step in our plan—green for items that have been completed, yellow for initiatives that are ongoing, and orange for action steps that intersect with RIT’s Action Plan for Race and Ethnicity, which we are working on with the greater university. Users are able to sort the action steps in our plan by category to make it easier to see the progress we are making.

NTID’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) hired Erica Scorpio as NTID's ALANA staff retention specialist and Aaron Pagan as a marketing communications specialist. ODI created this video to introduce Erica and Aaron to the community.

On March 25, 2021, we announced a $75,000 Antiracism Scholarship Fund—a joint effort between the NTID President’s Office and NTID’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The fund is supporting projects focused on antiracism research/scholarship or antiracism-related instruction. The following projects have been funded:

• Anti-racism in Deaf Theater Online Convening lead by Dr. Jill Bradbury. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, conversations about race were held nationally in response to the anti-racism call. The We See You movement has sparked the same conversations in the performing arts communities, but the conversations have not happened in the Deaf performing arts space. This community engagement project is to host a three-day online convening for representatives from Deaf theater organizations, Deaf theater makers, and Deaf theater educators to participate in a transformative conversation about anti-racism in theater.
• Antiracist Writing Pedagogy: What Does this Mean for our Students and Faculty? Lead by Dr. Rachel Mazique and Dr. Matthew Houdek. Research shows that the status quo of White Language Supremacy in university writing instruction negatively impacts ALANA students. This project will gather cross-disciplinary, research-based resources on how writing pedagogy can be both anti-racist and anti-audism, or inclusive of ALANA Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, and Hard-of-Hearing students. The project embraces an intersectional approach to inclusive writing pedagogy, seeking to apply research to practice at RIT/NTID while answering faculty and students questions about what anti-racist writing pedagogy means and how it can be adapted for implementation across disciplines.
• BIPOC Financial Literacy Speaker Series lead by Michael Kane and Yvette Chirenje. Equity in access to financial literacy resources remains an issue for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students. This project proposes to develop BIPOC student leaders, expose students to BIPOC Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing financial experts, and close the gap in financial literacy. This project will be accomplished by BIPOC students collaborating with the NTID Business Studies Department and the NTID Summer Transition Education Program. Mentors and BIPOC student leaders will form a student personal finance organization, which hosts BIPOC financial experts for an on-campus lecture series. Ultimately, BIPOC students will demonstrate leadership skills as well as identify resources for making well-informed decisions about personal finances.  

For more information, contact Peter Hauser.

I’m pleased to announce that Chris Campbell has accepted the position of Interim Director of Access Services, effective January 3, 2022, taking on most of Rico Peterson’s responsibilities while he is on sabbatical.

Campbell earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from RIT in 1996 and a master’s degree from the University of Phoenix in Computer Information Systems in 2000. He worked in the IT industry for 14 years, returning to RIT in late 2010 as a business analyst for the Department of Access Services. He has served in a variety of roles at RIT/NTID since then, including faculty appointments with the Information and Computing Studies Department and the Center on Access Technology. For the past year, he has been the director of operations for DAS, overseeing business functions and working closely with the interpreting and real-time captioning management teams.

Thank you to the staff who participated in the search process, including the search committee, which was chaired by Angela Hauser and Rick Postl.

What is the best part of your job?

The best part of my job is being able to work with the Deaf community in my hometown, and to be in an environment that allows me to breathe life into my ideas.  

What would surprise people to learn about you?

Something surprising about me is, even though I am left handed, I sign with my right hand. While taking ASL classes, I just copied my teachers, and it kind of stayed with me. It comes in handy that I can use my right hand to communicate.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I love investing in and collecting basketball/casual sneakers. It's interesting to see how much the value appreciates on certain sneakers. My partner finds it interesting that I can guess the resell price of students’ sneakers as they walk on campus. I'm usually pretty close!

What is the best part of your major? 

I am majoring in interior design and have a minor in construction management. I am super passionate about accessible design, for the Deaf community specifically. I love how a design can have such a positive impact on people's lives and their experiences. I also enjoy talking to other people in the Deaf community about what they experience within different spaces, and how the design of the space can be improved.

What would surprise people to learn about you?

I grew up dancing ballet since the age of three, and always wanted to pursue ballet as a career. I even danced with a company on Long Island for a summer when I was 15! It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I decided I wanted to go to college for design. 

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I love cooking for friends, family, and myself. I recently started growing my own sourdough starter and am hoping to start baking my own sourdough bread soon! 

• Donna Lange, associate professor in NTID’s Department of Information and Computing Studies, has been named to the CompTIA Technical Education Advisory Council.
• Luane Davis Haggerty, principal lecturer in NTID’s Department of Performing Arts, led a New York City Dance/Performative Storytelling Residency at the IRT Theater in Greenwich Village, Jan. 5-9. Members of Rochester’s PUSH Physical Theater; Jayme Bermudez, choreographer for the upcoming spring production of “In The Heights”; and 15 select RIT/NTID students participated.
• Gabriel Ponte-Fleary, videographer/web developer/designer in NTID’s Department of Access Services, and Anna McClanahan, a film and animation major in RIT’s College of Art and Design, were selected as finalists in a competition to produce/direct a commercial for Coca-Cola. This is the first time a member of the RIT community was selected as a finalist in the competition.
• RIT/NTID students Tori Covell, Samuel Langshteyn, and Serena Rush advanced to the third and final round of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival's Irene Ryan Acting Competition. Additionally, stage manager Kathryn Richer, who graduated in December, was one of three stage managers recognized at the KCACTF, and received the Don Childs DTM Cross-Discipline Collaboration Award for her work on the NTID Performing Arts production of “Angels in America.”
• The 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Scholars have dedicated themselves to academic excellence in the face of the challenges that the pandemic has caused. Students who have completed a minimum of 83 credit hours of study and have a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.85 for all work completed at the university as of the previous spring term will be honored at the Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar events March 17, 2022. They are:
  • Joelene Chiarilli, ASL-English Interpretation, Fayette, New York
  • Glyn Davenport, ASL-English Interpretation, Skaneateles, New York
  • Taylor Harris, ASL-English Interpretation, Ashburn, Virginia
  • Tadhg Hicken, ASL-English Interpretation, Rochester, Minnesota
  • Andrew Omeljaniuk, ASL-English Interpretation, Kings Park, New York
  • Samara Patterson, ASL-English Interpretation, Northborough, Massachusetts
  • Lauren Sabatino, ASL-English Interpretation, Dix Hills, New York

• Intersections: The RIT Podcast with Jill Bradbury, chair of NTID’s Department of Performing Arts and Andy Head, assistant professor in the Department of Performing Arts in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts.
• RIT/NTID multilingual platform World Around You earns 2022 Zero Project award
• Innovation Square draws students downtown
• RIT/NTID Dyer Arts Center, Gallaudet University Archives announce first-ever collaborative exhibition
• NYSP2I selects eight statewide recipients for 2021-2022 Community Grants Program
• New Pop-Up Gallery in Hyattsville Features Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Artists
• RIT/NTID’s multilingual platform earns international honor (subscription required)
• Registration open for RIT/NTID cybersecurity bootcamp
• 14 tech luminaries we lost in 2021
• RIT/NTID names artist Christine Sun Kim distinguished alumnus
• Thomas Warfield to keynote RIT’s Let Freedom Ring event on Monday, Jan. 17
• Pitt provides ASL interpreting services