NTID Awarded Grant To Create Interactive Web Site

The National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology, has received a $66,000 grant from The Graphic Arts Education and Research Foundation to develop the initial phase of an interactive Web site for deaf high school students to promote graphic communication as a viable career path.

Principal investigator Dr. Thomas Raco, faculty member in NTID’s Arts & Imaging Studies (AIS) program, will lead the three-year project, working with AIS Chairperson Dr. John Cox, AIS faculty member Jean-Guy Naud, and Counseling Services Chairperson Dr. Robb Adams, to create a site with information about careers in graphic communication.

“We have learned over the years that many deaf students in high school are not actively encouraged to consider graphic communication as a career option,” said Raco. “We also need to alter the misperception that jobs in the field dried up when the linotype era, which provided jobs for many deaf people in previous generations, ended.”

The site will include an online inventory of career exploration materials, requirements for entry into graphic communication degree programs and employment, a process for students to develop an inventory of high school preparatory courses, interactive and individual online advising, information about accessible postsecondary technical education programs, career paths and mobility patterns, and links to key industry associations and companies.

NTID is the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. One of eight colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology, NTID offers educational programs and access and support services to 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live and socialize with 14,400 undergraduate hearing students on RIT's Rochester, N.Y., campus.

Web address www.rit.edu/NTID. Visit www.rit.edu/NTID/newsroom for more NTID news.