Welcome
Fifty leaders in the field of support service provision for postsecondary deaf and hard-of-hearing students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from across the U.S. attended the "Summit" on the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in June 2008.
The primary outcome of this conference was a report on the current state of online remote interpreting and captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Additionally, the principals prepared a recommendation report specifying the characteristics of a multimedia cyberinfrastructure to provide remote communication support for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in mainstream STEM classrooms. The two-day conference, held June 26-27, followed the 2008 International Symposium on Educational Technology and Education of the Deaf, held June 23-25 at RIT. (http://www.rit.edu/ntid/vp/techsym/2008/index.html).
By September 2008, all of the objectives and work products detailed in the original NSF proposal had been accomplished and documented. In the spirit of the original proposal and to continue the enthusiasm generated during the Summit, a change of scope was requested from and accepted by NSF to expand the number of experts in the discussion and refine the recommendations reached at the June 2008 meeting.
By expanding the scope of the project, it was possible to further disseminate the findings of the June 2008 Summit, and expand the collection and analysis of expert opinion. These goals were accomplished through the presentation of papers at two national deafness-related conferences (CSUN Conference, March 16-21, 2009 and AHEAD Conference, July 20-25, 2009), and conducting three focus group discussions at these same conferences. Copies of the presentations made at these two conferences are in the Resources section.
The recommendations from these final three focus groups are included in an addendum to the original report, to be found on pages 39-46 of the Summary Report - Final.
See the resources section for all of the Summit papers and reports.