From the NTID President's Office - November 2023

Submitted by Charles McFadden

The Career Exploration Series kicked off Oct. 5 with a thought-provoking presentation by Dr. Rain Bosworth titled “Neuroscience: Your Amazing Brain.” The series offers engaging virtual webinars for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in grades 9-12, covering diverse career topics with hands-on STEM activities and insights into related RIT/NTID degree programs. Three more sessions remain for the fall 2023 semester. Each session so far has had an average registration of roughly 250 students.

• Nov. 9 – Engineering Explorations: Unveiling Innovations: Trisha Gard-Thompson
• Nov. 20 – Leadership: Colin Allen AM (member of the Order of Australia)
• Dec. 14 – Aerospace Engineering: DJ Monahan

Tiger Science Challenge is an all-new version of our popular Virtual Science Fair series. Each semester, a new challenge is released for middle school deaf and hard-of-hearing students to conquer, requiring some knowledge of science, a little bit of patience, and hard work. The fall 2023 challenge kicked off Oct. 1 and asked students to construct a freestanding tower using marshmallows and spaghetti. Video submissions of the constructed towers were due Oct. 27. 

Two exciting in-person competitions for deaf and hard-of-hearing high school students are slated for spring 2024:

• Thanks to a sponsorship from ZVRS and Purple Communications, the Outreach team will host a hybrid version of The Next Big Idea for high school students. The program kicks off with virtual pitches in early 2024, followed by an in-person grand finale set to coincide with Imagine RIT weekend. Join us at 2 p.m. Friday, April 26, in the Dyer Arts Center to witness the battle of young minds as they present their next big idea.
• With a new sponsorship from Sorenson and in collaboration with RIT eSports, NTID’s Center on Access Technology and Department of Information and Computing Studies, the Outreach team will launch an inaugural eSports competition exclusively for deaf and hard-of-hearing high school students. The program kicks off with three virtual gaming rounds with the best teams and individual players invited to compete in person at RIT on Friday, May 3. Stay tuned for more details!

Submitted by Laurie Furibondo

Wendy Dannels, director of XR Accessibility Solutions Laboratory within the Deaf Health Care and Biomedical Science Hub, develops real-time, immersive, and interactive technologies such as mixed, augmented, and virtual reality with a focus on accessible and inclusive experiences. Dannels is principal investigator for a three-year research project, “Evaluating the Use of Mixed Reality Smart Glasses for Real-Time Captioning Display and Interpreting Services,” a $600,000 award from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research’s (NIDILRR) center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which recognizes field initiated projects to meet the expectations of the Rehabilitation Act for participation. Deaf individuals continue to struggle with inconsistent accessibility to qualified sign language interpreters and captioners that are critical to equitable educational, employment, and community opportunities around biomedical sciences and healthcare. The major goal of this project will be achieved through tailored smart glasses that allow for deaf individual’s viewing of remote sign language interpreters and real-time captioners. One of the expected outcomes is enhanced communication access between health/biomedical deaf signing and non-signing individuals, regardless of line of sight, sustained attention limitation, executing activities limitation, or participation restriction.

NTID established DeafTEC, a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education National Center of Excellence, which serves as a resource for high schools and community colleges that educate deaf and hard-of-hearing students in STEM-related programs and for employers hiring deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.

For the past 10 years, DeafTEC has been a vital component of RIT/NTID’s strategic plan, with funding throughout the life of the program totaling $11,759,027, with an additional $870,383 of funding for other projects under the DeafTEC umbrella. DeafTEC has received its final NSF/ATE renewal grant of $1,649,965, and will be ‘sun setting’ July 31, 2026, after which time resources and programming will move to the NTID Regional STEM Center (NRSC).

Congratulations to Donna Lange, who established DeafTEC and has overseen its growth, expansion and funding throughout its 10-year history. Special acknowledgements go to Linda Bryant and Brian Trager as co-PIs, and Theresa Johnson as DeafTEC associate director. The DeafTEC team is supported by Barb Gasbarre, senior staff assistant. 

Submitted by Maria Ocasio

Join me in welcoming our new colleagues, and congratulating our colleagues who have changed positions and received faculty rank promotions

New hires:

• James Guido, non-tenure track faculty, Department of Performing Arts
• Colleen Grabenstein, product development captionist, Center on Access Technology
• Michaela Kihntopf, laboratory coordinator, SPaCE Center
• Chelsea Welborn, senior staff assistant, Enrollment Management

Change in position:

• Maggie Donaldson, assistant director of NRSC and special projects, NTID Outreach, Placement and Special Projects
• Gideon Samara, sponsorships, exhibits and IP manager, Office of External Affairs
• Michael Stanko, platform engineering and support services manager, Client Services

Promotion in Academic Rank:

• Matthew Dye, tenure track faculty, professor
• Rain Bosworth, tenure track faculty, associate professor
• Janine Butler, tenure track faculty, associate professor
• Sarah Sarchet, non-tenure track faculty, principal lecturer
• Mark Davis, non-tenure track faculty, senior lecturer
• Laural Hartman, non-tenure track faculty, senior lecturer
• Adrianna Smart, non-tenure track faculty, senior lecturer

What is the best part of your job?

The best part of my job is having a huge passion for teaching staff and faculty members at RIT as adults. I have them in a relaxed and fun learning environment in the classrooms.

What would surprise people to know about you?

People would be surprised to discover that I have collected over 100 cars on a 1/43 scale. Most of the cars are from Russia and Europe as well as Japan.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I bike, walk, watch my daughters’ sports games, do my chores, and watch movies in the evenings.

What is the best part of your major?

I am a biomedical sciences major, and I really enjoy all the unique elective classes that are available. I am taking a class called "Diagnosing the Criminal Mind" right now, and it has been so interesting! I am also so incredibly grateful for the resources available to me as a hard-of-hearing student. From access services like captioning to the many biomedical science opportunities I've taken advantage of at the Deaf Hub, I have had a great experience at RIT.

What would surprise people to know about you?

I think people are typically surprised by how many random hobbies I have.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I love baking bagels, crocheting, playing with shelter dogs, embroidering, and so much more. I try to always make some time for these hobbies.

Due to the volume of requests the NTID President’s Office receives for emails to be sent to the NTID community, we are changing the process this year. If you have an email that you want to have sent to all NTID faculty, staff, and/or students, please send the following to Susan Murad:

1. A Word document containing all of the text for your email
2. Any images or graphics that should be included
3. Image descriptions to ensure that any images or graphics are accessible (get more information on image descriptions)

Suzi will send your email to your desired audience (NTID faculty, staff, and/or students) using the RITMail system.

Please note that due to the volume of requests, you should submit your email content to Suzi as far in advance as possible and specify the date you want the email to be sent. Also, please be sure you have opted in to receive messages of interest from the RITMail system, which is where these messages are categorized.

If you have questions, please contact Suzi for more information.

• Congratulations to Catherine Clark, who works to ensure deaf and hard-of-hearing children in Ethiopia receive essential services. In recognition of her volunteer efforts, The Dr. Catherine Clark Center for Audiology in Hawassa, Ethiopia, has been named in her honor. Read more about Catherine’s amazing work.
• Congratulations to Joseph Hill on receiving the Lyon Founder’s Award from Rochester School for the Deaf. The award honors an individual who has made exceptional professional contributions to the education of people who are deaf.
• Congratulations to the Office of Alumni and Constituent Relations and the Office of External Affairs for a very successful 55th Anniversary Reunion! Special kudos to Loriann Macko, Marissa Woodruff, Amelia Hamilton and everyone who worked so hard to make this event a success.
• The Center on Access Technology received a $60,000 grant from Google LLC to study how to align spoken English and English captioning with videos in American Sign Language. ASL is a syntactically and visually different language than English; the three-dimensional structure and complex nuances of sign language makes interpretation difficult. However, CAT will use NTID-broadcasted announcements to create a dataset of ASL aimed at improving sign language interpretation.
• Kim Kurz had an article, “Revisiting gradability in American Sign Language,” published in GLOSSA, a journal of general linguistics.
• RIT/NTID alumnus and National Advisory Group member Scott Wills is the 2024 recipient of the American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Underrepresented and Economically Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences. “Working with the students, faculty, and staff at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf has been the highlight of my career in Dow, and I am thrilled to be able to direct the grant that is associated with this award to NTID to further their truly impactful work. Thank you to the Dreyfus Foundation for sponsoring this award, and to all the NTID students and Dow colleagues who have been part of this adventure.”

• NTID Performing Arts presents “Thy Name is Woman” Nov. 9-12
• RIT homecoming and NTID 55th Anniversary Reunion
• Renovations to NTID performing arts spaces
• NTID Play Lab’s second annual Brainy Day held
• Clinic in Ethiopia named for NTID Audiologist Catherine Clark

• Michael Altieri, an architectural and civil drafting technology major, passed away Oct. 23, 2023.
• Joseph Bochner, professor and chairperson of the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies, passed away Oct. 22, 2023.
• Patricia A. Foley, SVP ’79, ’82 NTID (Office Technologies), passed away Oct. 26, 2023. 
• Erich P. Kost, SVP ’83, ’88 Business Administration Accounting, passed away Oct. 29, 2023
• Daniel Pye, SVP ‘05, ’13, ’16 NTID (architectural and civil technology) and SDB (business management), passed away Oct. 2, 2023.
• Joshua A. Seal, SVP ’06, passed away Oct. 25, 2023.
• Ellen R. (Stucky) Trumble, SVP ’76, ’78 (applied accounting) passed away Oct. 19, 2023.