Among Ourselves December2010

The National Science Foundation-funded Science of Learning Center for Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) congratulates its students and faculty on the recent acceptance of an article entitled “Deaf Individuals’ Bilingual Abilities: American Sign Language Proficiency, Reading Skills, and Family Characteristics” into the journal Psychology. The authors include Brittany Freel, Dr. Diane Clark, Melissa Anderson, Gizelle Gilbert, Millicent Mysyoka, and Dr. Peter Hauser. Freel was one of the undergraduate summer research fellows at VL2 in the summer of 2009.

Dr. Barbara Gerner de Garcia, chair of the Department of Educational Foundations and Research, is a co-author of “An Overview of Newborn Hearing Screening Activities in Latin America,” an article that has been accepted for publication as Original Research in the Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health. Other authors of the article are Susan Chacon, New Mexico Department of Public Health; Claudia Gaffney, King Consultants, Atlanta, Ga.; and Marcus Gaffney, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Francis Duffy, professor of change leadership in the Department of Administration and Supervision, recently received word that his nomination to the Mansfield University Foundation Board of Directors was approved. The Foundation Board is a fund-raising entity that raises money from individual and corporate donors in support of Mansfield University. Duffy, who is an alumnus of Mansfield University, will attend his first official meeting in February.

Dr. Steven D. Collins, chair of the Department of Interpretation, traveled to Brazil in September for the first meeting of project directors for a grant program to initiate a four-year consortium that will enhance cooperative efforts in education for joint activities in fields related to signed languages and deaf communities. The grant proposal, which was approved in August by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and CAPES, the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Postgraduate Education, is being undertaken by Gallaudet in conjunction with Kapi’olani Community College, and the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in conjunction with Universidade Federal do Ceará. The goals of the project are to strengthen and expand existing programs and create diversified educational exchanges between students in the U.S. and Brazil in areas related to deaf education, teaching in American Sign Language and Brazilian Sign Language, deaf studies, translation and interpretation, and linguistics. As part of a collaborative effort, Dr. Melanie Metzger, a professor in the Department of Interpretation, is serving as co-principal investigator on the grant. She is on sabbatical leave working as a visiting professor in Brazil.

Dr. Christine Katsapis, director of the Office of Sponsored Programs, was nominated in April and has since been selected to join the National Council of University Research Administrators’ (NCURA) Professional Development Committee (PDC) for a two-year term (2011/2012). The PDC is NCURA’s standing committee responsible for all programs, activities, and publications devoted to the professional development of NCURA members. As a member, Katsapis will participate in the development, implementation, oversight, and evaluation of all professional development activity, including the Annual Meeting, Annual Meeting workshop, fundamentals of sponsored programs administration, special conferences and workshops, and Research Management Review, the peer reviewed journal of NCURA. Katsapis’ 14 years as a research administrator and prior service to NCURA (including being a member of the 2005 Leadership Development Institute), combined with her own research on the role of research administration, allows her to contribute to improved professional development for university research administrators across the nation.