Profile: Megan Majocha

• Current position: Tumor Biology PhD candidate
• Location:  Georgetown University/NIH, Washington DC
• Twitter: @meganmajocha,  
• LinkedIn: Megan Majocha 

Tell us about your background?  

I am third generation deaf, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. My parents are deaf, and my sister and brother are CODA (Children of Deaf Adults). I attended Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and Plum Senior High School. I had an interpreter while attending Plum for half of the day, and most of my classes at Plum were science-related! I went to Gallaudet University and graduated with a B.S. degree in Biology in 2018. I was a part of the Deaf Scientist Training Program in the Hunter Lab during my one-year post-baccalaureate fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), right after graduation. After completing my fellowship in 2019, I joined the Georgetown/NIH Graduate Partnership Program to do my PhD in Tumor Biology. 

How did you get to where you are? 

I have always loved science and knew I wanted to do something with science, but I didn’t decide which field until college. I enjoyed genetics, and it was my favorite undergraduate class. I did a summer internship at Magee Women’s Research Institute studying reproductive biology after my first year of undergrad. I realized I loved doing basic science research, so I started leaning toward finding opportunities in the biomedical sciences field. It wasn’t until my post-baccalaureate fellowship at the NCI that I became intrigued by cancer research. Genetics is involved in cancer, and I was able to use my genetics knowledge which was a bonus for me! I knew I wanted to pursue a higher degree in cancer biology to understand the complexity of cancer and its mechanisms. I loved the freedom to form my research questions and ideas, and knew that going for a PhD is one of the ways to do so.  

What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness?  

My biggest professional challenge has been finding interpreters who specialize in STEM. They are so hard to find. I was fortunate to meet a few scientifically trained interpreters in the lab at NCI. However, when it was time to start my first year as a PhD student at Georgetown, I was worried about finding qualified interpreters who have some experience in STEM. It was critical that I have consistent interpreters for my classes and lab work throughout the week. I did not want different interpreters assigned to me each day as it would be challenging for them to become familiar with my coursework and research. I wanted to be able to focus on my coursework and research, rather than teaching new interpreters signs and phrases all over again each time. I was fortunate to meet my team of interpreters who picked up science signs and became super familiar with my research, which was helpful. I have about 5-6 preferred scientific interpreters on my list, and I have them on-call full day the entire week, depending on their availability. However, I usually make sure I have two of my primary interpreters available to interpret for critical meetings, like my thesis committee meeting or presentations. The university accommodated me in so many ways, for which I’m very grateful.  

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job? 

I have at least one on-call interpreter in the lab daily from 9-5 pm. Sometimes there are two interpreters, depending on how heavy the meetings are on each day. The interpreters are aware of lab safety requirements prior to interpreting in the lab, and they have their own space in the lab, so they are always accessible. Suppose my colleagues are having a conversation in the lab and the interpreter can cover the conversation, then I am aware of what is being said instead of being left out. I can also use the on-call lab interpreter if I have a last-minute meeting or want to discuss my data with my PI or other lab members. 

What advice would you give your former self? 

Don’t be afraid to try new things and grab every opportunity given to you. Start networking early by reaching out to people in different fields and learning about what they do. Most importantly, life and work balance! 

Any funny stories you want to share?  

It was one long, dreadful day and one of my interpreters accidentally signed “farm” instead of “pharm”, which is short for pharmacology. Although they quickly corrected themselves, my interpreter and I still laugh about it to this day.

Profile: Nora Duggan

• Name: Nora Duggan
• Current title: PhD student
• Location: Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
• Field of expertise: Linguistics
• Twitter: @nkduggan

Tell us about your background

I grew up with deaf parents and a deaf sister so I was very fortunate to be able to use Irish Sign Language (ISL) at home. One of my favourite memories is my father telling his versions of classic stories such as Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood through ISL, which was WAY more fun than reading from the books. 

I attended an all-girls deaf school in Dublin. My generation saw the shift from oralism and all hearing teachers on our first day of school, to a growing number of deaf teachers and an acceptance of using ISL in the classrooms. During my school years, most of my teachers did not teach using ISL; but toward my final year I could feel the attitude shift among the teachers from not caring about whether we could understand them if they spoke, to feeling guilty that they had not learned ISL earlier. This was major, considering that my mother, who attended the same school, was punished severely whenever she signed. 

The two deaf schools in Dublin were an all-boys school and an all-girls school. My mother, my sister and I attended the girls’ school and my father attended the boys’ school. An interesting history about Irish Sign Language is the use of gendered signs. Because the schools were separate based on gender and there was very little interaction between their pupils, these schools had numerous different signs, sometimes even to a point where it impaired the ability for deaf people of different genders to understand each other (see Le Master, 1997 for more on this). This meant that my mother and my father had different versions of some ISL signs in our household based on their gender, although it must be said that my father used more of the women’s version of ISL signs as there are three women in our family. Truth be told, I had not really appreciated the uniqueness of the language situation in my family until I started my PhD in Linguistics. 

How did you get to where you are?

I have a BA degree in Geography, with a focus on Human Geography. My interests during my undergraduate years were the influences of the outside environments on deaf communities and how the communities embraced and/or resisted changes from external influences. I used to want to be a teacher, but during my undergraduate years, I realised that I loved research and wanted to continue doing research, so I decided to apply for a postgraduate course. Because of my interests in the dynamics of deaf communities, I took a MA degree in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism. My research focused on the relation between the Irish deaf community and the ISL recognition campaign; e.g. the deaf community’s access to information provided by the campaigners and whether they understand what the consequences may potentially be once ISL was recognised by the state (which it is now). 

I was very fortunate to have a deaf friend who was a PhD student herself. We met up for coffee and I told her I was thinking of pursuing a PhD. She told me to take a break in between my MA studies and my PhD studies to explore what was out there. Looking back on this, I appreciate this advice so much. In the five years gap, I’ve worked in different governmental agencies, advocated for deaf rights and even moved to a different country and learnt two new languages. Because of my experiences, I have a new appreciation for language studies which got me to where I am today, researching multilingualism in deaf migrants in Sweden!

What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness? How have you mitigated this challenge?

During my BA and MA, I tended to work alone the majority of my time and did not really seek the advices of my supervisors. This was for several reasons. The main reason was that it was difficult to get interpreters for either short or spontaneous meetings so I either had to speak with my supervisors or write to them. The second reason, particularly during my Masters, was that I found that I was constantly explaining how the deaf community works, how sign languages work, why certain terms were either appropriate or not appropriate and why I did not choose a particular theory that my supervisor thought would suit the topic best. I felt that the constant explanations ate up supervision time, and left no time to be mentored, so I avoided meeting my supervisor the rest of my Masters. Looking back on my thesis, even though the topic was really interesting, I felt that the lack of mentorship showed in my writing. I also had severe imposter syndrome, which meant that I was afraid to ask her simple questions in case I was seen as that deaf student that did not know anything.  

My principal supervisor for my PhD is a deaf signer herself and this helps me immensely not only in dealing with imposter syndrome (I can ask her simple questions without feeling ashamed), but I’ve also learnt that a supervisor is meant to act as a mentor that guides me in my writing and advises me on a wide array of areas. My PhD has been an incredibly emotional journey of reflecting on my past, especially on my school years. For this, I am forever grateful to my current supervisor!

What advice would you give your former self?

Build up a network of deaf students where you can share tips, or even just rant about barriers you’re facing. 

Working in Stockholm University where there is a great number of deaf colleagues, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to just rant to others about silly things that we as deaf people often have to face in the university world and I can get advice in how to navigate certain obstacles.

Any funny stories you want to share?

Learning new languages is exciting, especially when you have opportunities to use these new languages. This was the case for me when I moved to Sweden. I have not had the opportunity to use French outside of French classes at school so it was incredibly exciting for me to be able to use Swedish outside of the classroom. However, in order to improve my Swedish, I must use it every day even when I felt that I was not “good enough” in the language. The ä, å and ö letters were difficult for me to differentiate and unfortunately for me, some words can have an entirely different meaning with an ‘ä’ in it than an ‘a’. I’ll give you a real-life example! A common way to sign off an email is “med vänlig hälsning” (“with friendly greeting” would be a direct translation). When I started my job as a civil servant at the local council, there were numerous times I wrote “med vanlig halsning” (“with normal greeting”) … I can just imagine the faces of the politicians reading my emails that signed off with a ‘normal’ greeting!

Reference:

Le Master, B. (1997) Sex differences in Irish Sign Language. In J.H. Hills, P.J. Mistry & L. Campbell (Eds.) Trends in Linguistics. Mouton De Gruyter. Available at this link. 

Profile: Dr. Stephanie Flude

Twitter: @thenoblegasbag

Professional Information, such as: 1) Current role/title: 2) Location:  3) Field of expertise:

Earth Science PDRA,  freelance research, training and management consultant and artist. I currently live in a gorgeous seaside village in north east Scotland.

1. Tell us about your background? For example, tell us about your hearing loss, your schooling, and/or your family/culture

Unlike many of the other profilees, my hearing loss began in adulthood and I’ve only been part deaf for around half of my lifetime. I grew up in a town in northern England with a very middle-class upbringing. I don’t really remember interacting with any deaf people while growing up and my exposure to and awareness of deafness was limited to the idea that old people wore hearing aids, and sometimes someone would translate something into sign language on TV.

I probably started losing my hearing around the age of 21, but didn’t notice or get a formal diagnosis until I was in my mid-twenties. When I was 21, I had a hearing test as part of an investigation into some sinus pain I was having. With that test I discovered I had tinnitus; I came out of the test saying that I probably missed some beeps because I thought they were just normal background noise in my head that I hadn’t noticed before. In hindsight, I think that test actually showed hearing loss, but the consultants never actually showed me my audiogram or raised the issue – they just gave me a leaflet on tinnitus and that was that. I hadn’t noticed any problems with hearing, other than with one friend who is notorious for mumbling very quickly anyway, so didn’t think any more about it. Until a few years later when someone asked me if I was beeping. I thought my digital watch alarm had just stopped working about 6 months earlier. Turns out it was working fine and I just couldn’t hear it anymore. 

My first proper audiogram showed I had above average hearing in the lower frequencies, but I was losing the high frequencies. I was given one hearing aid to try out initially. I remember feeling very disoriented when leaving the audiology clinic, wearing that hearing aid for the first time as sounds on my left were louder in my right ear. I also remember substantial pain and discomfort during those first few weeks of wearing ear moulds. I don’t know whether I just had badly fitting ones to start with or whether there is just an adaptation period. 

My hearing loss is sensorineural, and probably down to a genetic mutation, but not any of the ones they can test for (or could test for 15-20 years ago). It is progressive and I was quickly moved onto wearing both hearing aids. And then more powerful hearing aids. A few years ago, I completely lost the highest frequencies in my right ear – that was not a fun hearing test as having a sound you can’t hear blasted into your ear at full volume feels a bit like your brain is being electrocuted.

Year by year I lose more and more of my hearing, and I’m now borderline eligible for cochlear implants, so there are big decisions for me on the horizon.

2. How did you get to where you are? For example: How did you decide on your field? How did you decide to pursue a higher degree in your field? What concerns did you have when you started out?

Some of my earliest memories are fossil hunting on a beach with my Mum. I think I inherited my love of the natural sciences from her. I’ve also always been a magpie, drawn to shiny things, and so developed an interest in rocks and minerals. I had the (rare) opportunity to take Geology at school, with one of the UK’s most enthusiastic and inspiring teachers, and got hooked. At university, I had plans to become a physical volcanologist (my inner magpie again – you can’t get much shinier than glowing basalt lava), but my maths and physics wasn’t good enough, and I drifted into geochemistry instead, where it is much easier to visualise and interpret data plotted on graphs and charts. I still wanted to work with volcanoes, and so research was really the only way to go. I managed to get onto a funded PhD program studying the temporal evolution of some Icelandic volcanoes, without having a masters, thanks to spending 5 months doing voluntary work at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

I finished my PhD in the usual (for the UK) 3-4 years, but my publication record got off to a slow start, so I was not very competitive in the research job market those first few years. In hindsight, it is possible that my hearing loss contributed to that difficulty – I was diagnosed about a year after completing my PhD, and so was probably struggling to hear and understand spoken conversations for a year or two before that, but without realising it, and instead just feeling tired all the time and low on capacity to get those papers written.

The slow start on publishing had me drifting from postdoc to postdoc. My first two postdocs, like my PhD, used a technique called Ar/Ar dating, where you work out how old a rock is by measuring isotopes of the noble gas Argon. At some point, funding for dating rocks dried up and I found myself taking a massive side step to work on a project that used noble gases as chemical tracers for carbon capture and geological storage (CCS). That was my gateway into the energy transition world, that has seen me working on a wide range of CCS issues, on hydrogen exploration, and recently teaching MSc students about energy technologies, climate change, and CO₂ emissions mitigation. 

I left mainstream academia about a year ago. By the time my CV (i.e. publication record) became competitive enough to stand a chance of getting an independent research fellowship or lectureship I was too “old” to be eligible for most fellowship programs (i.e. >10 years post PhD). When I started my last postdoc at Oxford University, I thought that would make-or-break my career. Thanks to Oxford’s exceptional careers centre, it broke it in the best possible way. I had the opportunity to engage with loads of entrepreneurial training and development, that helped me realise that academia is too restrictive for me – I am a generalist who thrives on getting above average expertise in a lot of things, but not the really high level of focussed expertise in a single niche, which is unfortunately still necessary to get on the permanent job ladder in the UK academic climate. The support network I developed through that training also helped me realise that my transferable skills ARE actually in demand, and it is possible to make a living off them. So I took the leap, set myself up as a portfolio career freelancer…. And landed right back in academia again with my first and third contracts, and I’ve just now started a new part-time PDRA at Strathclyde University, looking at storing heat in abandoned coal mine shafts. You gotta laugh.

This period of career transition was also important for bringing me into The Mind Hears. I first met Michele Cooke, co-founder of The Mind Hears, in San Francisco, at the AGU conference (back when we still had in-person conferences). I was giving a poster about native hydrogen. Michele was giving a talk about The Mind Hears and accessibility. We stayed in touch, and around the time I was finishing my last postdoc and looking out for freelance work, I saw that Michele was asking for someone to help with social media for The Mind Hears. So here we are!

3. What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness? How have you mitigated this challenge?

As my hearing loss is progressive, the challenges are constantly evolving, and it is difficult to distinguish between professional challenges and general life challenges. Following meetings, lectures, and seminars has become increasingly difficult over the years, to the extent that I feel like I benefitted from, rather than suffered through, the pandemic lockdown with the move onto online meetings, with captions. One specific challenge that comes to mind is when I realised that I couldn’t hear the fire alarm while working in a particular lab (noble gas labs use a lot of pumps and compressors, so they are quite noisy). My supervisor at the time set up an elaborate plan, that meant I wasn’t allowed in the lab outside normal working hours (yay! – no late nights!), and I would always have a building buddy who would stop by the lab if the fire alarm went off. It was a nice idea, but within a couple of months, everyone who was supposed to be supporting the plan forgot about it, including the supervisor who then scheduled me on evening shifts in the lab. I ended up just leaving the door open when I was alone in the building. To any lab owners reading this – please have your institutions install flashing lights as part of the fire alarm – it is far more accessible!

4. What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

It is more of an accessory than an accommodation, but I don’t know how I would survive without my Roger Pen / Roger On (or some other device that lets my hearing aids work like headphones – see post on FM systems). At the moment, most meetings I have are on video call, so my Roger Pen is attached to my computer and streams audio directly to my hearing aids. It is also great if I can get presenters to speak into or wear it during meetings, lectures etc. 

5. What advice would you give your former self?*

Don’t hide your fire!

I think becoming more and more deaf has increased my ability to advocate for myself, mostly out of necessity. And that seems to have improved my capacity to speak up in general and share my opinion more often.

6. Any funny stories you want to share? For example: hearing aid batteries going dead at inopportune times, mis-hearing  – hearing gaffes, dating with deafness

Remember that notorious-for-mumbling friend I mentioned in the first section? I remember a phone call with them – I think it was shortly before my hearing loss was diagnosed –  they were talking about going on holiday and I was really confused because it sounded like they were going on holiday to Frog. We spent what felt like ages trying to establish what the place was. “Frog” evolved into “Frarg” which made even less sense, before I eventually managed to parse “Prague”. More than 15 years later, it is still an in-joke and we occasionally just shout “FRARG!” at each other.

Profile: Amelia Dall

• Name: Amelia Dall, M.A., RPA, GIS
• Current role/title: Archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management – Royal Gorge Field Office and Archaeologist & Creative Specialist for SEARCH, Inc
• Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado 
• Field of expertise: Archaeology, Collection Managment and Geographic Information System 
• Amelia’s Website | Linkedin | ArcheoAndASL art

1. Tell us about your background

I was born deaf and raised in Maryland to two deaf parents, with a hearing brother, and we grew up utilizing American Sign Language in our household. I attended Maryland School for the Deaf from the age of 2, or 3, and graduated from the school when 18. I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Gallaudet University in 2012, and my Master of Arts degree in Anthropology-Archaeology from Texas State University in 2017. I recently received my Certificate in Geographic Information Systems (Spring 2022) from Front Range Community College. 

2. How did you get to where you are?

Being deaf, and having two deaf parents who both held affluent positions in the federal government gave me the opportunity to self-acknowledge the potential I could have for my future. My parents both encouraged pursuing a profession I wanted, and to never settle for less. Even though growing up it felt like my only option for a career was to be a deaf teacher, I knew I never wanted to be a teacher at a deaf school  because I wanted a profession allowing me to work outdoors.  

However, it was not until I was a Sophomore at Gallaudet University when I realized my passion for archaeology while taking an Art History class  under Dr. Marguerite Glass (an amazing professor) and “connected the dots” to my upbringing (I was always digging in the backyard, going to museums and historical sites, and loving the Indiana Jones franchise). I was able to go to an archaeology field school in Belize with the Maya Research Program funded by Gallaudet University in the summer before my Senior year. Attending field school confirmed my decision of wanting to go into the archaeology profession. I was the last student at Gallaudet University to receive the Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History, before they closed down the program. 

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree, I did unpaid internships as well as volunteered at several museums doing collection management to increase my experience in the museum/archaeology professions while working at various employment positions (one of which was at a group home!) to earn money somehow (and I was also on Social Security Disability Income, luckily). 

One of the volunteer jobs I did was with a professor (Dr. Ana Juarez) from Texas State University, transcribing funerary ledgers. The internships and volunteer work allowed me to have a list of references in order to apply for the archaeology graduate program at Texas State University, and the professor I volunteered with had also vouched for my skills. 

During my graduate program, I was a Graduate Instructional Assistant (GIA), and worked for the Center for Archaeological Studies under a wonderful Director (Dr. Todd Ahlman, who to this day continues to support and encourage my endeavors) doing site mapping and was how I came to learn about Geographic Information Systems. I also did part time work with Dr. Christina Conlee (who was also my thesis chair), doing lithic and ceramic analyses. I learned how to identify minerals within lithic and ceramic fragments, and to recognize the different types of materials. 

Because of my GIA employment position, I was able to incorporate GIS in my thesis work and after graduation, volunteered for organizations needing GIS work. I also continue to learn more about lithics from professionals when doing fieldwork, and to increase my education through them. 

A full-time job in Archeaology can require first having lots of different short-term positions to establish your expertise. After graduating with a Master of Arts degree in Anthropology-Archaeology, I was not able to immediately be hired for a position in the archaeology profession. I was hired as a Museum Educator for a local museum (Berthoud Historical Society; in Berthoud, Colorado), then a Weekend Visitor Services Coordinator (Denver Firefighters Museum; in Denver, Colorado). Fortunately, a year into living in Colorado, my former supervisor from Center for Archaeological Studies had an archaeology fieldwork project for a contract he needed to have done nearby Denver and hired me on the crew. This opportunity allowed me to increase my fieldwork experience in archaeology but was not enough for me to be hired as a field technician for a Cultural Resources Management (CRM) company, just yet. After the project, I was hired to work for two more museums (WOW! Children’s Museum and Denver Museum of Nature and Science) before finally obtaining an archaeological position working for Colorado Parks and Wildlife as their Cultural Resources Stewardship Technician. Most archaeology positions, like the one I had, are contracted for nine months to a year and do not pay well. So I had to move on and was able to get hired for a CRM company as a field technician. After a while, I applied for a temporary position with Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education under a contract for the US Army Fort Carson doing archaeological collection management (which is where my previous museum experience was handy to have!) and worked nearly a year there. It was, again, another time-limited contract and I had to move on. However, by this time, I had accumulated enough references so that when I reached out to an acquaintance (Chris Sims, @godigahole on instagram/patreon), he was able to get me a position with the CRM company he worked for (PaleoWest). Which led me to my current employment position for the past year, working for the Bureau of Land Management as an Archaeological Technician. I also started part time work for SEARCH as an Archaeologist & Creative Specialist (mainly doing their social media) in March, and this was an incredible opportunity offered because of my public archaeology outreach on my social media accounts. 

Being an archaeologist requires a graduate degree if one wants to pursue a position with the possibility of advancing in the profession (unless  one wants to stay a field technician). For example, I not only have experience in Archaeology but also in Collection Management (which is museum-related – if I ever wanted to work for the museum industry), and Geographic Information Systems. 

3. What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness? How have you mitigated this challenge?

My concern when first starting out was whether I’d be considered for employment positions due to my deafness; most employers, in general,  are iffy about communicating with a deaf person. 

However, I think the main challenge is to remind myself to not leave the profession due to loneliness as the deaf person in the workforce, and the fact that my coworkers/supervisors do not know American Sign Language. My love for archaeology and passion for this profession, is what keeps me going and motivates me to try my best in finding positions that are a great fit for me.

4. What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I am able to request ASL interpreters for meetings/lectures through an established system, and utilize a Garmin inreach®  satellite communications device when out in the field in case of emergencies. Otherwise, archaeology is usually an individualized profession where I’m able to go out into the field on my own. This means that I can have work-life balance by doing stuff on the weekends with my deaf friends and family members. 

5. What advice would you give your former self?

If I had already known what it is I wanted to do (the profession), then to hit the ground running much earlier in life rather than waiting till college to volunteer for opportunities. 

6. Any funny stories you want to share?

Archaeologists can be competitive, and the work is often tedious. Being in a great field crew also means ensuring some kind of fun during fieldwork. My favorite memory was when I was out doing fieldwork with a crew, and because the project was a “lithic wonderland” (aka we’d be finding and recording lots of lithic materials) we decided to hold an informal competition in who would find the most projectile points. At the end, one of the crew members held the title with 13 projectile points total and I was in second, with 12. This also made me feel I was exceptional in doing what I do, especially being a deaf person, and that I was just as great an archaeologist as everyone else on the crew.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Perseverance is key. In whatever profession one may have, within a hearing-centric workforce, perseverance is key in moving forward and in learning. Always present your work; develop a website, or mention your previous experience, or connect with people who would advocate for you. Be proud of all you’ve accomplished. 

Profile: Dr. Heather Fair

• Current title: National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology
• Location: University of Minnesota
• Field of expertise: stream ecology, microbial ecology of glacial-melt streams, glaciers and periglacial environments, and traditional ecological knowledge
• Website: www.heatherfair.com

Introduction: Someone took a bite out of my cookie

I was born with a bilateral moderate-severe mid frequency sensorineural (MFSN) hearing loss.  This type of hearing comprises 0.7-1.0% of sensorineural hearing losses in which high-frequency (descending) and pancochlear (flat) hearing losses dominate.  MFSN is described as the u-shaped audiogram or cookie bite hearing loss because sounds in the mid frequency, or spoken range are affected, with an audiogram that looks like a bite has been taken out of a cookie (Figure 1).  Cookie-bite losses are virtually all genetically acquired, whereas aging and noise exposure are the most frequent causes of high frequency hearing loss.  This link is an auditory example of what it is like to hear with a cookie bite hearing loss.

Figure 1.  A mid frequency sensorineural hearing loss audiogram.  The horizontal lines from 0-20 represent the decibels of sound that the average hearing person is capable of hearing.  The curved lines denote the decibels of sound in which an individual with cookie bite hearing loss can hear in the right (A) and left (X) ears.  This type of hearing loss occurs within the human spoken range with many sounds important for speech recognition masked by the hearing loss (e.g., p, h, g, ch, sh, f, k, s, a, r, o, and th).

As an ecologist, I think of people who are profoundly Deaf, those with a reverse slope hearing loss, a cookie bite loss, or deafness from a young age, as a rarity within the tremendously diverse field of ecology in which all individuals play an important role in the human ecosystem.   

Without hearing diversity, we are missing the tremendous collective power of different human experiences, ideas, and creative thought which is shaped by information that our ears and eyes take in and interpret throughout our lives.

Tell us about your background 

I was born and raised in a small Amish community in northeast Ohio where my Amish great grandparents were forced to leave the church due to their furniture business.  My grandpa (who spoke Pennsylvania Dutch), dad who was a mechanical engineer (who I suspect had a cookie-bite hearing loss), mom (educator who worked with people with disabilities), and brother owned and managed the store.  I lost my parents at an early age and the store has since become a brewery, which is pretty neat as I am a hop grower myself.   

At the time I was born, infant hearing tests were not standard, so I was not diagnosed with my congenital hearing loss until around the age of eight.  I was also diagnosed with severe near-sightedness at the same age.  When my family was at our farm one day, I asked, “what are all the people doing standing on the hill?”  What I thought were people were actually cows.  I was taken for my eye exam where the big E was a blob and I got my first bottle-thick bifocal glasses.   

As much as I hated my glasses, reading became enjoyable and I excelled at creative writing by using my imagination – because, hearing fatigue set in for me after the first few minutes of a class, and I was able to take a trip into my mind.  During these trips, I was terrified that the teacher would pull me back into the classroom by asking a question that I wouldn’t know how to answer, so I tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible.   

During my first hearing exam, I remember the doctor explaining hearing aids to mom but when technology limitations for cookie-bite losses and cost were discussed my mom’s expression guided the doctor’s response.  He waved his hands and declared, “don’t worry, she’ll figure it out!”  That’s the last time my deafness was discussed.  We have to remember that back in the 70s; the concept of accommodations did not exist.  Assuming an 8-year old would figure out what accommodations were and then apply them to her life was a monumental task.   

My most vivid recollection of kindergarten was at the final bell of the day, when the principle announced “it’s time to line up outside at the buses”.  I would put my head in my arms and cry in fear as this meant I had to figure out which bus was my bus number and read invisible lips when I was off track.  I was terrified that I would end up at the wrong end of the county instead of home!!  Could I have benefited from sitting in the front row in classes and obtaining notes from others?  Absolutely!  From cued speech?  Oh my, this would have been a game changer for a cookie-biter in a hearing world!  Learning ASL at a young age?  Absolutely!!!   

Looking back at my life up through mid-career when I finally got hearing aids, I’m amazed how I was able to stumble through life by reading lips, speech-guessing, expression reading, and avoiding burdening people by asking them to look at me and repeat.  What I ended up doing was to laugh or to nod my head with a “yah” when the overwhelming effort to figure out what was being said exhausted me.  Therefore, I suspect people had an impression of me as either scatter brained or very agreeable.  No one knew I had my deafness because I, myself, didn’t realize I had a credible issue because as the doctor said, I could “figure it out”. 

How did you get to where you are?

My road to becoming an environmental scientist was circuitous.  The wonderful advice instilled by my parents, “you can be whatever you want” is something I hold very close to my heart.  With my upbringing in a family business, business was the option I knew I could earn a living regardless of my passions, of which I had many. 

I spent summers in the nearby creeks and loved raising cows, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, parakeets, and a donkey, but I didn’t know that ecology/environmental science could be a career.  Besides playing first base in little league and punt-pass-and-kick with the boys, my first strong interest beyond writing was in playing and arranging music.  I played piano, trombone, trumpet, French horn, and e-flat alto, and later learned violin while I was getting an MBA.  No auditory words necessary with these pursuits. 
 

Whenever I had a passion to learn a new instrument, I headed to the little barn behind our house and practiced for hours.  Defiant!  No one was stopping me from switching from trombone to trumpet!   When I saw the Ohio State University Marching Band perform my sophomore year on a field trip, I decided this was the band I wanted to be in, so after high school I picked up an e-flat alto and painted 22.5-inch separated lines down the driveway to perfect the military-style high step.  Highly competitive, I made it into the band my freshman year and every successive year.  While around this creative group of musicians, I was amazed at how they could belt out crass jokes and sing lyrics to pop, rock, and looney tune hits!  How did they hear all those words?  I also was bestowed a nickname in the band that I won’t divulge, but I’m sure there is a direct correlation with my cookie bite hearing loss.   

I had considered a career in medicine but my first attempt at chemistry sitting more than 10 rows away and to the right side of the lectern with a heavily-accented Russian chemist lecturer in a 500+ student lecture hall, did not go well.  I decided I would rather work outside than in a hospital anyway, so I should find a career where I could travel.  So, I went the practical route and chose international business management and marketing with an almost-triple major in Chinese.  My ear guided my choices.  Plus, I had no concept of environmental science or ecology as a career.   

For my language requirement, I arrived at the packed 102 Spanish class and the only way to remain anonymous was to slink into the very last seat in the long line-up of desks.  I couldn’t understand a word the teacher said from that distance.  I thought, “wow, my Spanish sucks” and promptly dropped out.  That quarter I found out that the university had 1-on-1 Mandarin Chinese language courses.  I signed up for 3 credits, no pressure, self-paced.  The experience was phenomenal and I continued to take Chinese classes through the graduate level over the next two years.  I just had the feeling that China would become a super power in 20 years.  My fortune was that not many students were signing up for Chinese language classes at the time so there were only five to six students per class.  This was perfect – to sit around a small table so I could read faces and hear enough.   

Fast forward to my corporate career at Wal-Mart HQ in Bentonville, AR with fresh MBA in hand in the information systems and global procurement divisions as a business analyst and strategist.  I was able to use my Chinese and trained suppliers and associates on business analysis systems that we developed in Bentonville – all over Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong), Brazil, Hawaii, and Dubai.  My career was phenomenal and the trajectory was headed upwards, but I ended up having six different managers within seven years which didn’t allow enough time for advocacy-building and mentoring relationships to blossom.  I never mentioned my hearing, and at that point I still didn’t have hearing aids because the issue had been buried since I was eight.  I’m sure others noted something different about me….and they probably weren’t aware that I saw their subtle facial expressions when they thought I wasn’t looking.  But I was phenomenal at putting cross-disciplinary teams together and generating ideas to solve complex problems.  I worked with others to figure out innovative ways to weave systems and business processes together to cut down the lead time from product development to purchase order creation.  The rest was for the logistics team to handle, which they did spectacularly.   

I was in Hong Kong on an overseas assignment when 9/11 occurred.  At one point after returning stateside, I provided a flow chart that was shared by my IT managers with the US government that helped them to understand how Wal-Mart efficiently collaborated with suppliers by supplying data freely.   They had noticed that after 9/11 the stores closest to the trade towers were able to maintain adequate dog food supplies for rescue dogs, even when the rest of the country was at a stand still.   

The last six months before I took a leave of absence I was an initiating member of the China environmental team that examined climate change and product life cycle issues, and I developed a balanced scorecard for executives, put together a green bag luncheon series, and was active in several other environmental working groups.  At the same time, I was pigeon-holed into an accounting position (that was never on my career goals statement!).   

My career goal was to become an international executive but during a career development meeting a VP told me, “but women usually stay at home and raise the kids”.  I’m convinced that the time-lag it took me to hear what he was saying, which shocked me into silence upon realizing what he said, saved his pretty face.  Wow, how did I let someone get away with that comment!  I didn’t even have a husband or kids!  At the time, most expats were married males with at least a kid or four to put into private schools while overseas.  What a bargain they missed overlooking talented single females, but then, we didn’t look like leadership so we didn’t fit the profile.  

At that time I decided that if I was not traveling, and I loved the environmental issues so much, how would I become a VP of global environmental sustainability without a science background?   

I packed my bags and headed back to the university on a leave-of-absence, and my first NSF fellowship a year later sealed the deal.  I was able to cut the umbilical cord from the corporate world and I’m forever grateful to the OSU Chinese Dept., my master’s advisor, and the National Science Foundation.  I am thrilled with that decision because when you are so deep into the interests of the billions for pennies, and under stress that makes you sick, you lose sight of what is really important in life.  I was appalled when I considered the pollution emitted from China factories directly into the atmosphere and aquatic environments, and flip flops and plastic beach balls that sold for a dollar but remained in the environment for thousands of years, all in the name of low prices for Americans.   

Enough was enough; I had to learn how natural ecosystems worked before anything.  You lose track of yourself, family, and the living environment when you are in the corporate rat race.  I was once termed a “butterfly” because I networked with corporate leadership and the hard-working busy bees to brainstorm solutions, but now this butterfly was ready to migrate.  I’m so glad I let my VALUES and magnetic compass guide my second career. 

While in graduate school I spent half of my time conducting stream ecology research in mountain regions and glacier-melt streams in a small Tibetan village in the Three Parallel Region of SE Tibet.  I acquired my first pair of hearing aids around the second year of my Ph.D.  I went to an audiologist because my roommate that summer mumbled constantly and it was driving me crazy.  When the audiologist, with his thundering New Zealand accent asked me “now how are you going to become a CEO with those ears”? I realized I really needed help.  With my hearing aids, music suddenly had a third dimension, and I heard rain drops, keys, footsteps, book pages fluttering, key board tapping, and many other sounds for the first time.   

My hearing aids helped tremendously, but they are not like putting on a pair of glasses.  It takes time to retrain your mind, and it will never be as good and immediate as a pair of glasses but they can be a game changer if you give your mind time to comprehend and adjust to what you are hearing.  I completed my Ph.D. in 2017 and am currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow in biology conducting supraglacial microbial ecology research. I was a Knauss Fellow at US Geological Survey, taught at Middlebury School of the Environment in China, Kenyon College, and Ohio Wesleyan University, and have mentored many students.

What advice would you give your former self? 

This is actually a reminder to my current self to advocate for policy change and insurance coverage for hearing aids (in particular for congenital and disease-caused deafness).  Why does a graduate student/terrified teaching assistant need to pay ½ of her low-income stipend for six consecutive months to cover a tool she needs to be able to perform her job (e.g., hear student questions, gain confidence in the classroom, pick up ancillary information, network with other graduate students, hear lectures)?  For those who have a hearing anomaly that requires the most up-to-date technology, we should consider providing new hearing aids at least every 5 years, and more frequently if there is a radical technology breakthrough.  After 10 years of daily use and tender care, my first pair wasn’t doing a thing.  I didn’t realize this until I got a new pair.  This should be considered for the future health and competitiveness of our nation.  Additionally, training for all Americans to understand the issues faced by those who are profoundly Deaf and those who live with deafness would help in creating an inclusive and understanding country.  

Any funny stories you want to share?

Before hearing aids, I constantly performed mental gymnastics to figure out what everyone was saying because what they were voicing seemed nonsensical.  If I could remember everything my mind first “heard” I could be a stand-up comedian.   Even with hearing aids, misunderstanding words is a frequent occurrence because hearing aids can never solve the ear-brain connection, although they can greatly reduce the time lag to solve the puzzle.    

When I was heading to the gym one day, listening to NPR in the car, Ann Fisher was talking about eating bacon as a huge problem affecting young people, and I wrestled with this for a couple of minutes trying to figure out why young people eating bacon was currently such an issue.  First, young people don’t typically get atherosclerosis, and since when did bacon become such a hot food item? Then it suddenly came to me — she was talking about vaping!  Aha, now that made sense.   

The irony about all this is that as everyone’s hearing is on the decline with age, mine will probably be the best at age 90 because with every few years, the technology to support cookie bite hearing losses becomes better.  I heard new sounds with my second pair of hearing aids, and practically ran for cover as I heard “Pterosaur screeches” before my mind converted them into black bird caws.  Imagine what I might be hearing at age 90. 

Profile: Dr. Anna Danielsson

Professor of Science Education, Stockholm University

Twitter: @annatdanielsson 

Link to website

Foto. Mikael Wallerstedt

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Tell us about your background

When I was about four years old my parents noticed that I wasn’t able to hear crickets, but the pediatrician couldn’t find anything wrong with my hearing. Somehow, I also passed the school hearing tests, so throughout my schooling I had no idea that I didn’t have normal hearing. With all likelihood, I’ve had at least some degree of hearing loss since childhood. I’ve always had tinnitus and has always been the last person to notice my mobile phone ringing. Still, having no high frequency hearing was normal to me and I had no idea what I was missing. It wasn’t until in my thirties I realised that you were supposed to hear the lyrics of music. Since my hearing loss was diagnosed ten years ago my ski-slope has migrated to the left in the audiogram, my low frequency hearing is still within the normal range, but it then drops of very quickly. Practically, this means that I’m mostly OK with understanding speech if listening conditions are good, but that my speech understanding deteriorates quickly with background noise, distance, or bad acoustics. 

I grew up in a small village in the middle of Sweden, about five miles from the nearest town, Falun, and about three hours north-west of Stockholm. The community I grew up in was very much a working-class community – my mum worked as a nurses’ aid and my dad at the local papermill. My dad had left school at thirteen, but mum had graduated from the upper secondary school science programme. Like her, I identified with being good at maths. I enjoyed school, had good grades, and my parents supported me. Throughout compulsory school I was in rather boisterous classes and in retrospect I can guess that my hearing loss probably helped me focus, making it easier for me to disregard all the noise in the classrooms. I was fortunate to have very good science and maths teachers in lower secondary school. In upper secondary school, the science programme seemed like the obvious choice. Despite coming from a non-academic background, going to university also was something I more or less took for granted as being in my future – something also made possible by higher education being free in Sweden and the student loan system generous. What I was going to study was a more difficult choice – throughout school I had always had broad interests across the sciences and the humanities, in particular. In the end I opted for physics.

How did you get to where you are?

I did my undergraduate degree in physics at Uppsala University. After much deliberation, I decided to study a subject that I had found interesting in upper secondary school and that also presented very much of a challenge. I liked the idea of physics being perceived as a difficult subject and didn’t mind it being a very much male dominated discipline, quite the opposite, in fact. This also contributed to the sense of doing something unusual. However, as the studies progressed, I still found physics interesting, but I had a hard time imagining myself working as an experimental physicist, the path that I was on. I also studied history as an undergraduate student, eventually earning a Bachelors degree, but didn’t really see much of a future in that discipline. Towards the end of the physics studies, I took a course in physics education research and that’s where I found a discipline where I finally could combine my interest in physics, with a broader interest in the humanities and social sciences. I then got the opportunity to do a PhD in physics specializing in physics education research at the same department as I had done my undergraduate physics studies. I had found an academic discipline where I felt I belonged. My PhD thesis is entitled “Doing Physics – Doing Gender” and is concerned with university physics students’ identity constitution in the context of laboratory work. 

After the PhD, I did a two-year postdoc at University of Cambridge. As you would expect, my English improved during these years, but I struggled more and more to hear what people were saying. I did interviews with student teachers as part of my postdoctoral project and my transcribed interviews  were full of gaps, because I just couldn’t make out what was said. Towards the end of the postdoc, I googled “high frequency hearing loss” and what I found was very much in line with my experiences. When I got back to Sweden after the postdoc I went to see an audiologist and the hearing test showed that I had ski-slope type of hearing loss, with no hearing in the high frequencies. I got bilateral hearing aids straight away. 

After the two-year postdoc at Cambridge, I returned to Uppsala University, but this time to the Department of Education, as senior lecturer in curriculum studies. In 2018, at age 39, I was promoted to full professor at the same department. Since last year, I’m chair of science education at Stockholm University and lead the science education section, with about twenty-five senior researcher, lecturers, and PhD students. The more I’ve risen through the academic ranks, the easier I’ve found it to get accommodations for my hearing. Part of this is due to often being more in control of situations (I often chair meetings, for example, and can then apply a strict talking order), but it’s also about being listened to when you talk from a position of power. 

What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness?

In 2016 I was recruited to King’s College London, as Reader in Science Education. This really was an incredible opportunity, in a highly inspiring research environment. But, for the first time, my hearing loss presented a very substantial obstacle. The acoustics were terrible, sound kept leaking in from the busy road outside, and I was working in my second language. While I’m more or less bilingual in Swedish and English, I’m much more sensitive to bad listening conditions in English. This experience is common for most second language speakers. Hence, I was struggling in meetings and while teaching, and was exhausted all the time. At the same time, I enjoyed the work and really liked living in London. But, in the end I decided that it just wasn’t worth it, after a year I left the position and went back to Uppsala University.

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I have a microphone system with three Roger table mics and a Roger pen, connected to my hearing aids, that I use for teaching and in meetings. I also connect one of the table mics to my laptop to be able to stream sound directly to my hearing aids, for example, in Zoom meetings. Swedish universities and public placed are often equipped with hearing loops.

Any funny stories you want to share?

As a graduate student I was teaching an evening class about “Everyday physics” and one of the topics was sound and hearing. As part of the topic, I wanted to demonstrate the human range of hearing using a tone generator. I tried the tone generator out in the lab, but just shy of 4000 Hz I couldn’t hear anything, no matter how much I turned up the volume. Thinking that there was something wrong with the tone generator, I went to get another one. Same thing. I then went to get a colleague and he could hear the sound almost up to 20 000 Hz, just like you’re supposed to as a young adult. In the lecture hall I asked the student to raise their hands and then take them down when they could no longer hear the sound, as I raised the frequency. In the mixed group of students, some twice my age (I was in my mid-twenties), no one took down their hand before about 15 000 Hz. You would think that I would have realised that something was wrong with my hearing there and then, in that lecture hall. I didn’t. Having no high-frequency hearing was normal to me. 

Profile: Elli Harpum

Location: UCL, London UK 
Field of expertise: Quantum Physics
@victorianphysic

photo credit: Hannah Coleman

Tell us about your background

I have had hearing loss since I was 14 months old, having glue ear treated with grommets that led to scarring on my ear drums. I lip read as a child and this covered my hearing loss until I was in Sixth Form, when I contracted a severe ear infection in both ears. After treatment, I spent several years trying to find the cause of my hearing loss, but it wasn’t until after I had finished my BSc and MSc that I started to become involved in the Deaf community. My family are all hearing, and we are Christians. My brother is learning BSL and the rest of the family have all indicated that they would like to learn. I went to a local comprehensive, and then to a boarding school for sixth form where I was a day pupil. I then went to university in Cardiff for my BSc, and UCL for my MSc and am now working on my PhD.

How did you get to where you are?

I have always wanted to study Physics; my earliest memories are from stargazing and when I discovered I could study space as a career when I was 12 I was ecstatic. As I learned more Physics, I realised that space wasn’t even my favourite sub category of Physics- that belonged to magnetism. A family friend started a PhD in my teens and that was when I was determined to do one myself, in Physics. All I ever wanted to do was study Physics all the time. I wear an insulin pump, which is affected by magnetic fields. My biggest concern was that I would have to adapt my diabetes treatment so that I could study what I wanted to.

What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness? How have you mitigated this challenge?

As I progressed through my BSc I realised that other people’s perceptions of me were always going to be my biggest challenge; for some reason my disabilities are the thing that people think are going to prevent me from achieving my goals. To mitigate this, I do what I do and I do it well. Just because I have a different work pattern or have to take extra days off when my diabetes gets in the way or I have another ear infection doesn’t mean I’m not an excellent physicist.

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I work from home (which started way before the pandemic!) and am allowed to work flexible hours. I have captioners for video meetings, who have been trained in the vocabulary that is used in my field to make them much more accurate than automatic captions. 

What advice would you give your former self?

You work differently to other people, and that doesn’t make you wrong or worse than anybody else, or not able to be a Physicist. You are an excellent problem solver. Go to the GP and get treatment for depression and anxiety. It is not a failure to need help. You will feel so much more yourself when your brain chemicals are balanced properly.

Any funny stories you want to share?

In my undergrad, I had concessions for my hearing loss, like I sat near the front of the lecture hall, etc. I was also allowed to ask lectures to shave their beards if it got in the way of lip reading!

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Short bio:

Elli is a Quantum Physicist based in the UK. She is deaf, diabetic and disabled, and uses a wheelchair. Elli also wears an insulin pump with continuous glucose monitoring sensors, which can be a problem around magnets, her main research focus! Despite having multiple hearing problems and operations since childhood, she was only diagnosed in June 2020 with hearing loss, but has embraced her deaf identity since then, getting involved in Deaf Rainbow UK, her local Deaf Association and learning BSL. 

Elli is a passionate advocate for disabled academics and has spoken at several events about being a disabled woman in Physics. 

Elli did her BSc in Physics at Cardiff University, and her MSc at UCL. She is currently on a medical break from her PhD in Quantum Physics but intends to return to academia one day. In the meantime, she is writing a series of picture books about her disabilities for her friend’s daughter and a novel about being diagnosed and discovering the Deaf community in early adulthood, learning BSL, tutoring maths and physics, and being a Guide leader on Zoom. 

Elli is married to Sam, and they live in Cambridge, UK. Elli is currently persuading Sam that they need an academic cat!

Profile: Dr. Krista Kennedy

Current Title: Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric, Syracuse University

Field of expertise: Rhetorics of Technology

Years of experience: 16

website: KristaKennedy.net

What is your Background?

I became severely/profoundly deaf after a bout of spinal meningitis at the age of 2. I was fitted with hearing aids and sent to regular speech therapy sessions quickly after my parents discovered my deafness. My educational path has been twisty, largely due to having been what would now be called “twice exceptional.” I began my education in Montessori prior to getting sick, but the school was not welcoming when I was able to return. From there, I went into the Arkansas public school system, where pre-school and kindergarten classes grouped all the children with disabilities together with two teachers. My mother advocated for me to move to mainstream classes, where I moved for part of kindergarten and on through second grade. The following year, I skipped third grade and spent fourth and fifth grades as a scholarship student at a wealthy, private K-8 school. Then I moved to a private religious school for sixth through eleventh grades, dropped out early because the school wouldn’t consider early graduation, and got myself admitted to the local state university, which had an open admissions policy. There, I made it for a couple of years, dropped out to work for a while, then returned and finished my BA while working full time. I realized that I really liked school a lot more than I liked my job, although the job’s tuition reimbursement program paid for the rest of my undergrad work, and I noticed that professors got to keep going to school forever. To be a professor, I clearly needed a doctorate. So, I quit my job the same week that I graduated with my BA, got an MA at the same university, and then moved out of state for my PhD. I had no accommodations during any of my education and really had no idea what might be available, aside from sign language interpretation. And since I never learned to sign, that wasn’t really an option.

How did you get to where you are? For example: How did you decide on your field? How did you decide to pursue a higher degree in your field? What concerns did you have when you started out?

My mother was a writer and I always wrote with her, first with crayons and then with our Atari computer. It was just always something I did, and I started publishing as a teenager in local venues. So, it was natural to double-major in English and Professional & Technical Writing and then to continue to focus on Writing Studies and Rhetorical Studies through my grad work. As someone who had become very distanced from their own deafness, I had no concerns about my own education when I began, no awareness of listening fatigue or its impact. I had some worries about whether or not I could teach in a traditional classroom, but through happenstance I began my teaching career in online learning environments. I just assumed that this was the wave of the future and that I would continue doing most if not all of my teaching online — something that turned out not to be true until the pandemic hit.

What is the biggest professional challenge (as educator or researcher)? How do you mitigate this challenge?

My biggest challenge happened on the tenure track, when I had ideas, archival research, and arguments, but was largely unable to get my writing done while in a research-intensive job. After teaching entirely in face-to-face classrooms with students from the northeast whose accents were unfamiliar to me and then attending a variety of faculty meetings and talks, I simply didn’t have the energy left to think in ways that facilitated writing my tenure book. At the same time, I was developing advanced degenerative arthritis that went undiagnosed for longer than it should have. It took a while for me to understand that this amount of listening was causing significant listening fatigue or that a mix of listening fatigue and chronic pain will almost certainly short out one’s thinking capacity, that I could negotiate accommodations, or what accommodations might be useful for me. And as someone who had relied on passing for most of her life and knew no other deaf professors, I had no community to rely on for answers. Now that I’ve spent 6ish years sorting through internalized ableism, building community, setting limits on how much listening I do each day, negotiating accommodations through the ADA office, and educating my colleagues about CART and my availability, my research productivity has skyrocketed. 

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I use CART at all talks and large faculty meetings, teach in a variety of modalities (face-to-face, hybrid, and online), and schedule listening breaks throughout the day. To help manage chronic pain, I’ve arranged to teach in my own building or those right next door to it and moved my parking space. Our campus ADA Advocate has been an invaluable resource for negotiating all of this.

What advice would you give your former self?

Look for other people like you. Talk to them. Don’t feel like you have to do this alone.

Any funny stories you want to share?

Working with my last smart hearing aid, a Starkey Halo, led to a whole new research trajectory on algorithmically driven medical wearables. One of the moments that got me there is hilarious. The hearing aid was so new that I hadn’t yet changed the first battery. I was home alone on a dark and stormy night, prepping a chicken for roasting. Suddenly, a male voice said “Battery!” right in my ear and let me tell you, that chicken went flying. That was how I learned that the aid would talk to me when its battery was dying, which led to a host of questions about user interaction, why the default voice was white, male, and American, and other cultural aspects of this particular design.

Profile: Dr. John Dennehy

• Current title: Professor 
• Location: Queens College CUNY, New York 
• Field of expertise: Virus ecology and evolution 
• Years of experience (since start of PhD): 25 
• Website: dennehylab.org 
• Twitter: @DrJDennehy 

Background?

I was born deaf. At the time, my family had recently moved to rural New Hampshire. Early on, my parents struggled because I did not hit age-appropriate speech and language milestones. However, doctor after doctor told them that my hearing was fine. One even suggested that my mother seek psychiatric help. Finally, my parents took me to Mass Eye and Ear, where I came under the care of an amazing woman, Audiologist Rhoda Morrison. She properly diagnosed my hearing loss (profoundly hearing impaired), and connected me with another amazing woman, Leah Donovan, a speech therapist.  

We moved to the suburbs of Boston to be closer to Mass Eye and Ear and Ms. Donovan. I was fitted with hearing aids and rapidly became verbal. My family attributes my rapid acquisition of language to the fact that my mother and my aunt would regularly read to me. In fact, my habit of placing my ear on their throats while they read led them to believe I was unable to hear.  

By the time I was ready to go to school, there was debate as to whether I should attend Beverley School for the Deaf or mainstream at North Reading Public Schools. Encouraged by Ms. Morrison and Ms. Donovan and learning about newly implemented speech and language services at North Reading Public Schools, my parents decided to mainstream me. Despite the challenges of being deaf,  I found school easy and was often bored. I read constantly, everything I could get my hands on. My aunt likes to tell this anecdote about when I was very young. She asked me why I asked so many questions. I responded, “I want to know ebrything.” 

My school career was checkered. Depending on my interest in the subject, I would either do extremely well or barely squeak by. I did not hear much that went on in the classroom but was able to compensate by reading everything. Even in grammar school, I had my sights on advanced study after college. However, I often felt stymied and underestimated by school administrators. On the last day of 6th grade, my friends and I opened our junior high school class assignments for the following fall. Finally, we had graduated from elementary school to having classes in real subjects: life science, English, history, mathematics. Classes were assigned numbers for degree of difficulty: 0 for honors, 1 for standard and 2 for remedial. I sat in shock and shame on seeing I was assigned to level 2 classes. These assignments were not based on my grades or my standardized test scores, but rather the perception that, as a deaf student, I would not be able to compete against my peers in a junior high classroom. Skipping ahead 4 years, my guidance counselor at my highly competitive private college prep school disregarded my National Honor Society standing and told me not to bother applying to my top choice as I did not stand a chance in getting accepted. Consider instead a local state school or even a community college, he advised. Later, at Holy Cross, an academic advisor told me I should be ‘more realistic” on learning of my intention to follow the pre-med program. Medical schools would not make “exceptions” for my disability. In any event, patients would avoid a deaf doctor regardless of his qualifications. I remember these events often and have made it a point in my life to make sure that I do not belittle the aspirations of others.  

My advisor’s advice notwithstanding, I followed the pre-med track as an undergraduate. However, on being employed as a phlebotomist at a local hospital, I realized medicine was not for me. I disliked working in the hospital and found the work exceedingly stressful. Since I had been targeting medicine as a career for most of my early life, I did not really have a plan B. After a few lateral moves, I decided to pursue a career in academia.  

How did you get to where you are? 

Following my decision not to seek a medical degree, I was not sure what to do. I interned at a few companies in industry, but nothing really captured my interest. I ended up taking a job as a groundskeeper at a fancy New Hampshire resort on a lake. I had not quite finished my bachelor’s degree (all that remained was completing Physics II), but I agreed to work from May to November. That summer was quite idyllic. I enjoyed the outdoor work immensely and was quite prepared to not return to college in the fall. In my non-working hours, I evaluated different methods of estimating chipmunk population density for my college honors thesis. At some point, I found out that my boss, Carl, was the son of zoologist Hubert Frings of the University of Hawaii. Carl himself had done extensive behavioral ecology work with his father and advised me on my research project. From him, I learned more about science and academia as a potential career.  

One day at the end of August, Carl took me aside and said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to fire you.” I was stunned. I thought we were getting along well. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time here,” Carl continued, “You should be finishing up your degree. You still have time to enroll in fall courses.” So, with that, I returned to school to finish Physics II and graduated the following semester.  

As I was increasingly interested in wildlife biology, ecology, and evolution, I applied for and was accepted into the master’s program in zoology at the University of Idaho. I will not dissimulate here; my main motivation, in addition to getting a masters, was to explore the country around Idaho. I was captivated by the place names on the atlas — The Wilderness of No Return, Hell’s Canyon, Yellowstone, Snake River, Glacier National Park, Craters of the Moon — that flanked the largest wilderness area in the lower 48.  

For two years, I studied the behavioral ecology of pronghorn antelope on the National Bison Range in Montana. I loved the work and found myself very much at home in science and academia. Unfortunately, I discovered that behavioral ecology was a very challenging field to pursue. Jobs and funding were difficult to acquire, and the work was very slow making it difficult to demonstrate productivity. Some faculty in my department advised pursuing other fields of biology, perhaps with microbes. At the time I thought, “Microbes? Are they nuts?” 

My master’s studies were also noteworthy as I reached the limits of my ability to compensate for not being able to hear much of what occurred in classrooms by reading extensively. My professor in Comparative Vertebrate Reproduction would cover the very latest research, which was not written up in the standard textbook. This circumstance forced me to acknowledge my deafness to myself and realize that I could not compete with my peers without assistance. With considerable reluctance, I sought help with Student Services, and was provided with a notetaker. It worked out well in the end; my friend was paid to attend class and take notes (as she should have anyway) and I received extensive notes on the lectures.  

Following graduation from University of Idaho, I decided to pursue mosquito biology reasoning that, as disease vectors, the research would be fundable by NSF and NIH. I joined Todd Livdahl’s lab at Clark University for a PhD. The project, which included a research assistantship, was fully funded and would be close to my family in Massachusetts. I enjoyed my time in Worcester, Massachusetts and was happy with my decision to pursue an academic career. However, after a couple of years, I became somewhat disenchanted with mosquitoes; they suck (blood). To maintain mosquito populations in the laboratory, we were obliged to feed the female mosquitoes blood meals so they could lay eggs. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest and cheapest is to use graduate students. So, I offered up my arm for mosquito feeding for science on a daily basis. The only good thing I can say about this experience is that it somewhat reduced my body’s reaction to some mosquito species’ antigens. For some mosquito species, bites no longer itch.  

After a couple of years of blood-feeding mosquitoes, I decided to do my dissertation research on another topic. In a committee meeting, one of my committee members suggested that I should model my career on Richard Lenski of Michigan State University. He was one of the founders of the field of experimental evolution. For my dissertation, I decided to experimentally evolve populations of the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans to test hypotheses regarding the evolution of sex and recombination.  

After successfully defending my dissertation, I reached out to Rich Lenski and inquired about a postdoctoral position. He let me know that he did not have any opportunities available, but that his former doctoral student, Paul Turner of Yale University, was looking for a postdoc. Working with Paul, I was able to acquire an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and took up the study of the bacteriophages of Pseudomonas syringae. Yes, microbes. The very same organisms I shunned as uninteresting just a few years prior.  

In Paul’s lab, I fell in love with phages and decided it would be my scientific focus in my own lab someday. After three years in Paul’s lab, Ing-Nang Wang invited me to join his lab at University at Albany to work with Escherichia coli phages. Here I learned about genetically modifying phages and started a long-term project on stochastic gene expression that I continue today.  

In 2007, I was hired as an assistant professor at Queens College and rose through the ranks to my present position as full professor. My two biggest accomplishments are having a continuously funded laboratory over the past 14 years and having mentored dozens of students from a wide variety of backgrounds in research. I still study the viruses of bacteria as well as other viruses such as rotavirus and SARS-CoV-2.  

What is your biggest professional challenge? How do you mitigate this challenge? 

My biggest professional challenge is hearing in difficult situations, such as in noisy environments or in rooms with poor acoustics. This manifests itself at events such as scientific conferences and while teaching. I have great difficulty hearing amplified talks, questions from students during classes that I teach, and people speaking during noisy conference dinners or poster sessions. This difficulty makes it very challenging to network with other scientists or keep up with advancements in my professional field. Social media, especially Twitter, have helped mitigate this challenge somewhat. In addition, the COVID19 pandemic has led to a transition to video conferencing, which, when coupled with live transcription, make it much easier to understand my colleagues when they speak.  

One of my great failings has been not asking for accommodation when needed. Asking for help goes against my very strong impulse towards independence and my desire not to inconvenience others. The COVID19 pandemic has inspired me to advocate for myself much more than I formerly did because without accommodation (i.e., live transcription), I would not be able to participate in my work. I am resolved to request assistance when needed in the future, which may come in the form of interpretation at conferences and other events and in the classroom.  

What advice would you give your former self? 

Two things: 1. Trust your instincts, and 2. What do you care what other people think? 

Profile: Dr. Stephanie W. Cawthon

• Current title: Professor 
• Location: The University of Texas at Austin, USA 
• Field(s) of expertise: Education and Disability Equity
• Years of experience in academia (since start of PhD): 24 years
• Website: stephaniecawthon.com       
• Twitter: @swcawthon

Where did you go to school?

After early childhood in a segregated setting for students with disabilities in Canada, I was in mainstream classrooms in both public or private U.S. schools. I went to Stanford University for my BA and MA (both in Psychology) and then University of Wisconsin at Madison for my PhD in Educational Psychology. 

What do you do now?

I wear several hats in my professional life. I am a full professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology, with a courtesy appointment in Special Education. I am the Founding Director of the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes. I am also the Director of Research for Drama for Schools, a partnership with UT’s College of Fine Arts, and an Editor of Perspectives on Deafness at Oxford University Press. But no single role really captures what I do, so I started a new website: stephaniecawthon.com. Do check it out. 

What kind of hearing loss do you have?

Both ears, sensorineural and congenital, roughly 50DB-55DB (moderate range). In practical terms, speech is fine in some situations, not in others. I’m missing much of my upper range. I lip read a lot and fill in gaps with contextual clues even when I don’t realize it. Talking to me from the other room is a sure fire way to make sure I don’t know what you’re saying. 

How do you identify?

These days, I identify as deaf, inclusively defined. Until about five years ago, hard-of-hearing. Never as hearing, although many in my family would have described me that way. 

Do you use an assistive listening device?

I got hearing aids at about age 4 and used them continuously in public until recently. Now I use them as additional support in settings that are not accessible. I also appreciate captions to help fill in gaps when people are not signing. 

Do you sign?

Some. I first took a few ASL courses in college (liberating!) and then more much later, when I had deaf graduate students and colleagues who signed. I’ve had some private tutoring and learned a great deal working with a wide range of signers and interpreters over the years. Fingerspelling (expressive or receptive) at a natural pace is still the most difficult part of the language for me. 

How do you communicate at work?

If there is a deaf person in the room who signs, I will sign. In the last few years, this includes public presentations, which is terrifying — particularly when the interpreter is new or doesn’t know me. If the group is all non-signers, I will voice and, depending on the accessibility and availability of interpreters, will ask for access support for receptive language. When I am teaching a large class, I will sometimes sign, especially if I know I will be relying on interpreters for receptive language to communicate with my students. It’s too hard to switch back and forth from voicing in English and seeing ASL. 

What advice do you have to your former self?

I pretty much went full steam ahead for the 20 years from PhD and through full professor promotion. At one point, a senior colleague advised me to remember academia is a marathon, not a sprint, and to slow down. That felt pretty entitled coming from someone who didn’t have to face the negative biases and elevated standards of my cohort — especially compared with that of 30 years ago, when jobs were more plentiful and budgets were flush. Instead, my advice is to pay attention to the physical and psychological requirements of running a very fast marathon, because that is the reality for anyone facing an uphill battle in light of audism and other -isms that are still very much the drivers of perspectives in higher education. I now know the tremendous energy and personal costs required of running that fast marathon. But I also now know what helps: earlier bedtimes, more boundaries around the speed of responding to requests, the magic of saying “no,” yoga, therapy, relying on a support network, finding a creative outlet, and taking vacations. 

Has your professional identity as a deaf academic evolved? 

I think it’s pretty clear from my research that I have a personal connection to deaf people, but there was rarely a time early in my career when I put my deaf identity front and center in my work. A major pivot point was when my college asked me to be a presenter for a brown bag lunch series. Instead of focusing on a research study or line of inquiry, I presented a personal account of how my professional identity has evolved over the course of my career (so far). I called my presentation “Statistics Don’t Lie ‘Til You’re Trying Not to Be One.” I quite nervously signed it, with a trusted interpreter who knew me well. 

Something I name in that presentation — and have been working through ever since — is the twin impact of audism and imposter syndrome. I think many deaf academics and professionals come to realize the extent to which we internalize audism, which then sets up the tyranny of low expectations about us and can contribute to feeling like we’re totally fake (imposter syndrome). This has shown up in subtle and overt ways throughout my lifetime, both personally and professionally — such as the attitude that research in deaf experiences and deaf education isn’t as important as that of other fields. I was even told by a boss once to consider another line of research, because people aren’t really interested in it. Over 100 publications and nearly $25 million in grant funding later, I just smile.

What do you know for sure? 

As all ideas that mature, there is a deepening of the core essence of what you are doing. I think I always knew this in a general way, but as I quickly approach 50 — at what is typically the halfway point in an academic career (I finished my PhD just shy of 30) — here’s what I know for sure:

• Systemic barriers and opportunities are the long term solution. That kind of work is not what I was trained to do, but I have a passion for it. Working towards systems change is my number one goal for the next half of my career.

• Inferences about individual outcomes of deaf people require taking context and deaf perspectives into account. Research is very much about evidence — and how we view that evidence says as much about us as researchers as the data themselves. 

• Disciplined work and progress in small ways add up fast. Even when you can only do a little, just do a little. I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear, and it has been the most influential boost in this pandemic productivity malaise.

• It’s really hard to keep up with current literature without having a reason to read it. Write so that you have to read, so that you can then write. The most recent article I led, Evidence-Based Practices in Deaf Education: A Call to Center Research and Evaluation on the Experiences of Deaf People, will publish in Review of Research in Education in April 2021, and it was an opportunity to explore new fields and tie those perspectives with what I have already built over the past twenty years. 

• One of my best and apparently rare skills is asking good questions. This is true in my role as friend, as colleague, as mentor, as supervisor, as leader. I have learned that there’s no right answer to most situations or problems, but there are great ways to think clearly about strategy and decision making when you have a chance to respond to good questions. 

• I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do next. There’s a shift coming, and I’m in that pause between letting go of one bar on the trapeze and catching the next. I love working in a leadership role and building places where people can thrive. This is inclusive of mentoring graduate students — having them as part of a larger team is such a critical experience in their development — and working with staff, who are some of the most important and under-recognized members of an academic community. 

• Thought leadership and dissemination is one of the most exciting things that I do. I very much like giving media interviews and graduation speeches, using social media tools to build a community of thinkers, and writing and sharing information that has practical application. I love the intersection of research and communications, especially how strategy makes the whole endeavor coherent, both visually and in terms of message and content. Being asked to be on this blog is part of it! Thank you so much for the invitation.