12
“Get Busy!”
KNOWING THE ROOM number, I went in search of my office on my first day at my new job at NTID. Here it was, a small utility room on the first floor of Building 9. Dr. Astor, a hearing faculty member who was one of two assistant educational specialists, was already there, sitting at one of three desks, along with our secretary, Louise Chatfield, a grandmotherly person who really took care of all of us, including all of the program’s students. We were to share the space. The third assistant educational specialist, located in another office, was Warren Goldmann, a young deaf faculty member and graduate of Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
At my first meeting on my first day, my direct supervisor, Dr. Victor Galloway, announced he would be leaving for a job at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), a high school for deaf and hard of hearing students at Gallaudet College (now University), in three weeks. I was surprised and disappointed at the news because I had been looking forward to working with him.
“Stay at my house until you find a place,” Warren told me that first week. He was one of the first three people in Rochester to have a TTY at home, so I used it to contact Vicki in St. Louis in the evenings after work.
About three weeks later, Vicki flew to Rochester to spend a few days with me and look at houses. Our home in St. Louis was a ranch-style house with three bedrooms and two baths, and we wanted something similar or better here. Unfortunately, most houses in Rochester were two-story colonials that had one-and-a-half baths. We found a house we liked very much in the Village Green subdivision in Penfield off Whalen and Baird Roads, but felt that it was too far from RIT, so we didn’t make an offer. We agreed it would be best if we could find an apartment to live in while we took a year to find a house to our liking. We found a nice place at Crittenden Way Apartments, a stone’s throw from RIT, with stores and restaurants nearby. My drive home for lunch every day was without traffic, over winding, back roads along the Genesee River. It was on my drives that I gauged and appreciated the seasons, driving through rain, sunshine, snow, blooming trees and flowers, and bright fall foliage and falling leaves. Like St. Louis, Rochester was a real city, with cinemas and great restaurants and sports teams and leagues and conference centers and clubs, but also like St. Louis, it had beautiful rural spots immediately outside of the city center.
Soon after Vicki flew back home, our house in St. Louis sold, thanks to her father’s real estate knowledge. After we arranged to close the deal, we packed up our things for the move. Vicki, Bernard, and I were finally together in mid-October after I flew to St. Louis and drove our car to Rochester.
At last, my family was with me! At lunchtime nearly every day, I drove home so we could eat lunch together in our kitchen. And when I was back at the office, Vicki enjoyed walking with Bernard in his stroller over a tiny wooden bridge across a creek, taking him to the stores each day since our refrigerator was rather small.
I went to my first college-wide meeting with NTID Director Dr. Frisina, who led a discussion with faculty and staff. Engrossed by the new experience of having a professional interpreter, Mickey Jones, at the meeting, I marveled at being able to understand everything. Wow! I was enthralled with this new experience and had goosebumps throughout the session and afterward. I had never before had full access to communication in large groups or professional settings. This experience made me realize how much I had missed not only in group meetings but also in the classes I’d attended in college. I felt this was a new beginning for me.
There were twenty-plus deaf students in various engineering programs in two different colleges at RIT. Our role was to support and provide them with tutorial assistance and make arrangements for interpreting and note-taking services in each student’s class. Here I was, helping students the way I wish I had been helped during my own college career.
Later, as our responsibilities increased, I hired Dominic Bozzelli, who was hearing, as the third faculty member on the support team. He was a Notre Dame graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. As we expanded to include a newly formed computer science program, I hired another hearing man, Jim Chmura, as a fourth faculty member. Stemming from this was an amazing team forming the ICCE (Institute College and College of Engineering) support department, and I became a department chair. We had fun working closely with students and faculty in the ICCE, comprising engineering technology and computer science programs. When my schedule allowed, I taught courses in math, physics, electronics, and computer science.
In the next four years, I had different supervisors—Dr. Castle, Dr. Jim Speegle, Dr. Robert Gates, Dr. Jim Collins, and Dr. Milo Bishop—all hearing. During that time, the ICCE team and I moved to four offices in the building while we expanded for faculty offices, a tutorial room, a study room, and a lab for our students.
I thought about applying to the Leadership Training Program (LTP) at California State University at Northridge (CSUN) since, at that time, it was a hot spot for those who wanted to get a master’s degree in administration and supervision. I asked Dr. Frisina to get his insights on whether I should pursue a second master’s degree. His answer surprised me. He discouraged me from attending the LTP; he suggested instead that I could develop my management and leadership skills on the job. “There are so many good role models and mentors right here on campus who could guide you on your professional development,” he said. “I for one would advise you to get a PhD,” he said. I thanked him for his advice, but I didn’t have the motivation to pursue my doctorate at the time, so I put the idea in the back of my head.
Sometime later in the following year, Dr. Mac Norwood, a charming deaf man full of energy and intelligence who was known as “the father of closed captioning,” came to NTID for a meeting. At the time, he served as the branch chief of educational technology at the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. We knew of each other but had never met, so he came into my office to chat. His smile was impish and his signing quick.
“You need to think seriously about going for a doctoral degree!” he told me. I shrugged. “Not sure how that would benefit me,” I said.
He stood up and said, “Alan, get busy! When I got an honorary degree from Gallaudet College, I felt bad that I hadn’t really earned it. It wasn’t a real doctoral degree, you see?” He went on to tell me that this feeling of dissatisfaction propelled him to the University of Maryland, where he completed all requirements for a doctorate.
“We need more qualified deaf people to earn doctoral degrees because it will level the playing field for the deaf leaders of tomorrow! Think about it!”
After he left, my office felt strangely still and small.
I solicited insights from my supervisor, Dr. Bishop. Like Dr. Norwood and Dr. Frisina, he strongly encouraged me to pursue doctoral studies. “But why?” I asked him. “I’m interested in knowing what data you are relying on to make this suggestion.”
“Because I have high hopes for your progressive leadership development. You could go far. But you currently have two marks against you, career-wise,” he said. “You’re deaf, and you only have a master’s degree. You can’t change being deaf. Go for your doctorate. I know it will open doors for you in the future.”
Now three men I respected had urged me to pursue a doctorate.
In late 1974, there was a big leadership shuffle. Dr. Castle became the NTID director. Our former director, Dr. Frisina, was promoted to the senior vice president for institutional advancement for RIT. Dr. Bishop was appointed as the dean of NTID, and he asked me to be the director for the Office of Support Services and take over the Office of Interpreting Services and training programs for interpreters, notetakers, and tutors.
I was reluctant to leave the ICCE team because I enjoyed working with the students and the team. Dr. Bishop explained that he needed me to manage and train support services personnel and that I was ready to move on and assume more significant responsibilities. Jim Stangarone, the original coordinator for interpreting services, had just stepped down to take on new responsibilities in the admissions office. I agreed to take over, despite not wanting to leave the ICCE team and students. Luckily, the change of duties still allowed me to continue with teaching as a part of my overall faculty responsibilities. I moved to an office in a dorm room on the opposite side of the RIT campus, on the second floor of Ellingson Hall in the new NTID complex, which included the LBJ building, the Peterson and Bell dormitories, and the Shumway Dining Hall.
Now I had a team of five full-time and seven part-time interpreters, forty student interpreters, a scheduler, and a secretary. Lavina Hept, a scheduler under Jim Stangarone’s stewardship, continued to work with me. Bless her heart and soul—with her institutional memory of interpreting services, she helped me get started quickly. I hired many new interpreters, both experienced and newly trained. I continued to increase the number of full-time interpreters to meet student demand over time. I also initiated a strategy to improve the compensation plan for interpreters. I was concerned about recruiting and retaining highly skilled interpreters, and I believed better pay and enhanced working conditions were the best way to attract them to NTID. It was critical to ensure that NTID was viewed as a competitive market for highly skilled interpreters, so that our students would benefit from having the best interpreters in their classes, giving them real access to the material and classroom activity. Today, RIT/NTID has 150 full-time professional interpreters, over 200 student notetakers, and fifty real-time captioners, likely the largest cadre of access service providers at any university in the world.