Gallaudet University, Clerc Center named Apple Distinguished Schools

Gallaudet University and the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center have been named Apple Distinguished Schools for 2022-2025. Apple Distinguished Schools are centers of innovation, leadership, and educational excellence. They use Apple products to inspire creativity, collaboration and critical thinking in learning, teaching, and the school environment, and have documented results of academic accomplishment.

Khadijat K. Rashid, Dean of the Faculty, said, “Gallaudet University is honored to be recognized as an Apple Distinguished School. We share with Apple the goal of inclusive excellence. We also know that technological solutions work best when the people who stand to benefit from these solutions are involved. Our work together – past, present, and future – shows our shared commitment to foster innovation and inclusion in education. It supports Gallaudet in advancing the three priorities of The Gallaudet Promise: extraordinary learning and academic excellence across the lifespan, knowledge creation and discovery, and signing ecosystems and career success. It upholds Apple’s commitment to education and to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, and deafblind. Together, we will make the world a better place for all.”

The selection of Gallaudet University as an Apple Distinguished School highlights the university’s success as an innovator and a compelling learning environment that engages students, and provides tangible evidence of academic achievement. For instance:

• Apple products and applications drive the work of the university’s Motion Light Lab (ML2), which uses immersive, research-informed learning experiences from a signing/Deaf perspective to produce sign language storybook apps for deaf children to transform their reading experience in multiple signed languages.
• ML2 also produced Here Comes Mavo, an award-winning 3D children’s film with animated Deaf characters. Their work with signing avatars has advanced the use of motion capture technology.
• Deaf Studies students created bilingual, bimodal children’s ebooks with Apple proprietary software and Mac computers in collaboration with their counterparts at Swarthmore College.
• Information Technology capstone students learned iOS app development and developed a COVID-19 tracking and resource app.
• Linguistics graduate students are creating apps for an ASL corpus.
• The Office of University Communications created several Apple Maps Guides highlighting the signing ecosystem in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and beyond.
• Students are entering pitch competitions with creative Apple hardware and software solutions.
• Finally, Gallaudet is using Apple products as it submits its reaccreditation application bilingually, in ASL and English, to its accrediting body.

Together, Clerc Center and Gallaudet serve deaf and hard of hearing students across the lifespan.

Read the official news releases from Gallaudet University and Clerc Center.

Read President Cordano’s email message to the campus community, and watch her ASL announcement.