Dr. Christopher Krentz is associate professor of English and ASL and director of the American Sign Language Program at the University of Virginia. He is author of Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (University of North Carolina Press, 2007) and editor of A Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing, 1816-1864 (Gallaudet University Press, 2000). He has published articles on deafness and disability in literature and culture. Dr. Krentz helped to found the American Sign Language Program at the University of Virginia. Although he began slowly losing his hearing at age nine, Krentz had little contact with the signing Deaf community until age 23, when he got a job at Gallaudet University. There he began learning ASL and proudly identifying with Deaf culture.
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From Lewiston, New York, David Pierce graduated from RIT in 1988 from the New Media program. Pierce has spent over 20 years in the television production industry and has worked as a producer, director, videographer, production coordinator, and programmer. At the time of his Lyon Memorial Lectureship presentation, Pierce had recently re-launched his own production company and was also the president of the NTID Alumni Association. Pierce was selected for the lectureship series in view of his diverse work history and active involvement in television production.
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Nancy Oyos Rourke was raised in San Diego, California. After high school she attended NTID/RIT. She was a cross-registered student in RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences with a graphic design major and a painting/illustration minor. Rourke continued on to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree in computer graphics design from RIT. She has worked for Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft. Rourke's Lyon lecture covered the topic, "Succeeding in the Competitive Workplace."
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Born hard of hearing in Hollywood, California, James "Jim" Macfadden attended hearing schools throughout his primary and secondary education and relied on lip reading. After high school, Macfadden attended Gallaudet College, where he majored in economics. Upon graduation in 1962, Macfadden was employed as a computer programmer and moved up the career ladder to eventually become a division manager. In 1986, Macfadden started his own company that provided computer services and consulting.
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Born in Croatia, Jelica Nuccio moved to Alabama as a child. There, her parents enrolled her in the Alabama School for the Deaf. Nuccio's parents disliked having their daughter communicate in ASL, a language they did not understand, so they sent her to the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis for oral training and later to a mainstream high school. Following high school, Nuccio went on to RIT, where she received her bachelor's degree in biology, and then to Emory University, where she earned a master's degree in behavioral services and health education. At the time of her Lyon lecture, Nuccio was a cryogenic technologist at the Emory Genetic Laboratory as well as a project officer for the Centers of Disease Control. Her Lyon lecture was titled "Breaking Barriers: Trailblazing in the Scientific Field."
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Raymond "Ray" Conrad earned a bachelor's degree from RIT in business administration in 1981. He went on to the University of Maryland, where he completed graduate studies in Management Information Systems and then received an MBA degree. In 1995, when Conrad was invited to present for the Edmund Lyon Memorial Lectureship series, he was an office technology consultant for Hewlett-Packard. Conrad was a chairperson of Hewlett-Packard's deaf and hard-of-hearing employee network and is a strong advocate for barrier-free work environments.
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