Dr. Prinzi is a dedicated and skilled instructor in NTID’s bachelor of science in interpreting program. Her course, Introduction to K-12 Interpreting, is well-structured, engaging, and highly relevant for aspiring educational interpreters. With profound knowledge in her field, Dr. Prinzi expertly covers the complexities of K-12 interpreting, classroom dynamics, and the latest research.

She excels in creating an interactive and inclusive learning environment, using multimedia resources, and stimulating discussions to foster critical thinking. Dr. Prinzi encourages students to understand interpreting techniques and consider the nuanced factors affecting communication in diverse learning spaces.

Her commitment to student growth is evident in her openness to feedback and dedication to continuous improvement. Dr. Prinzi’s high standards and clear communication in both ASL and English make her an ideal role model for aspiring interpreters.

Dr. Janine Butler’s prolific research career at NTID has mostly centered on the field of rhetoric and composition and using this research to improve captions and accessible communication, particularly in classrooms and educational spaces. Dr. Butler uses her research to advocate for the use of multimodal communication to expand accessibility for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individuals. Dr. Butler also uses innovative and creative strategies for captioning to convey meaning. For example, Dr. Butler explains and illustrates how creative captioning is used in ASL music videos, expanding the accessibility of this media to a broader audience.

Dr. Butler’s research involves collaboration with researchers from other NTID departments, RIT colleges, and other institutions. Dr. Butler’s research led to the direct development of two RIT courses on access technology and captioning. These courses lead students to become advocates for accessible spaces, both online and in the community in order to make pedagogies more accessible and to connect with audiences. Dr. Butler is authoring a digital book titled “Visualizing Captions and Subtitles: The Embodiment of Accessible Multimodal Communication,” which will include visuals and videos to show how instructors, students, and video creators can make captions central in their practices.

Dr. Rain Bosworth; a past recipient of the pre-tenured Scholarship award; has continued to make an impressive impact to the university. She continues in her belief that students benefit from the interaction with faculty and by having the opportunity to contribute and be a part of research and scholarship. In addition, Dr. Rain Bosworth in her scholarship statement: “I'm committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in academia and to mentoring students from all backgrounds.”

She has added to her impressive work and research topic, and is now using her knowledge gained in research to mentor others. Teaching, mentoring students in the NTID Play Lab, Co-authoring publications with students and graduate advisor to three grad students.

Below is a summary of some of Dr. Rain Bosworth’s scholarship and accomplishments.

Teaches for the Inclusive Leadership & Community Development (LEAD) Bachelor’s Degree Program, LEAD 351, which is Quantitative Research Methods. In the Spring of 2023 Dr. Bosworth structured the course using her knowledge of research to guide students in the steps of a research project. She “structured this class as a close, frequent partnership with students as I guide them through all the steps of a research project, with a method of their choosing on a topic they are interested in. Together, the students and I completed IRB applications, CITI training, brainstormed topics, whittled down to specific hypotheses and measures, and created the materials. Students went out into the community to recruit research participants and gather data.”

Students Involvement as Leading Co-Author, worked as a mentor for two deaf students in the PhD in Educational Neuroscience program at Gallaudet University.

Schwenk, M., Bosworth, R.G. & Quandt, L.C. (2023, March). Sign Naïve and Native Signing Infants’ Visual Preferences for Signing Avatars. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Palagano, J., Quandt, L. C., & Bosworth, R.G. (2023, Sept). Signing and Non-Signing Preschoolers' Gaze Patterns Toward Dynamic Sign Language-Print Storybooks. Digital Media and Developing Minds International Scientific Congress. Washington D.C.

Bosworth, R.G., Schwenk, M., & Quandt, L.C. (2023, Nov). Looking Preferences for Signing Avatars: Does Naturalness MaOer? Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, Ca.

Mentoring Students in the NTID PLAY Lab. Currently have a variety of the lab personnel including 2undergraduate students, 4 deaf graduate students, and 1 recent deaf post-bac. We also have 2 part time staff members. In all, the majority (7 out of the 9) employed under my supervision are deaf or hard of hearing. The majority are fluent in ASL, with the 2 remaining members showing emergent skills in ASL.

A key accomplishment of Dr. Bosworth, within the last 3 years is obtaining a specific type of award from NIH called Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) for Undergraduate-Focused Institutions. This new award, effective August 2023, provides a total of $428,054 for the goal of involving students in my research activities.

Graduate advisor: Three master students who will complete their work within the year and plan on presenting their theses at the Society for Research in Child Development meeting.

Dr. Rain Bosworth has a solid track of over $600K in funding to support the NTID PLAY lab for the next 4 years (with another application to the Spencer Foundation for $350K under review), She presented at 10 international conferences (several of which were keynote), and I built a strong lab foundation, bringing in many great students and employees, for studies of child exploratory play informal classroom and informal museum learning environments.

“Dr. Bosworth’s biggest strength lies in rigorous grant application attempts and grant success. In the last 3 years, she obtained over $628,000 with two external awards. She also has one pending external award for $375,000, to support her research over the next 5 years. Her research topic is on exploratory behaviors and learning in deaf preschoolers is very important. Finally, she was just awarded an AdvanceRIT Connect Partnership Grants for $3,425, to implement networking and professional development events to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing faculty who have scholarship in their plan of work. In all, she has 5 current awards. In the last 3 years, she has 2 peer-reviewed journal publications and 4 peer-reviewed conference presentations, all with graduate students as co-authors.”
- Kathryn L. Schmitz, Ph.D., Chairperson and Associate Professor

- Nancy J. Marrer, Chair of SAC and the committee members.

Assistant Professor Corinna Hill’s ongoing work on her dissertation which was successfully defended last year, which is directly related to her field of expertise in teaching (Deaf Studies) has enabled her to include current scholarship from a wide range of perspectives and teach students from different majors/colleges. This has caused her to have a large following of students who enjoyed her Deaf Studies courses which are an essential component of NTID’s strategy to educate the larger community about deaf people, thus making her an outstanding ambassador in this role. This is evidenced by students in the RIT Honors program expressed an interest in having Corinna offer a Honors course in Spring 2025.

Elizabeth Ayers is the 2023 recipient of the Outstanding Teaching/Tutoring Award for Non-Tenure Faculty. One student described Ayers’ ability to motivate them and their classmates about their own genetics as on par with the female version of Indiana Jones. One College of Science faculty member often will reach out to Ayers to strategize ways they can support deaf and hard-of-hearing students in their mainstreamed classes. The students Ayers supports in College of Health Sciences and Technology courses value her professional experience as a sonographer and the way she can connect those experiences to the material they are learning in the classroom. Her empathetic approach to tutoring and teaching is valued and respected by her students and colleagues.

Austin Gehret is the 2023 recipient of the Outstanding Teaching/Tutoring Award for Tenured Faculty. His students and colleagues have all praised his professionalism, communication skills, organization, and use of visuals in both teaching and tutoring. He is able to convey difficult scientific concepts in a variety of ways and is patient and accommodating to the needs of his students. Through his mentoring skills, he has inspired his students from associate to post-graduate level. His research and publications in science and science education contribute to the advancement of deaf and hard-of-hearing students and educators.

Dr. Rain Bosworth has only been here for a short time, but has contributed an amazing amount of expertise and scholarship activity to the university. One of the biggest focus of Dr. Bosworth is her belief that students benefit from the interaction with faculty and by having the opportunity to contribute and be a part of research and scholarship. Below is a summary of some of Dr. Rain Bosworth’s scholarship and accomplishments.

Dr. Bosworth’s Perception, Language, and Attention in Youth (PLAY) Laboratory focuses on early sensory experiences that shape our visual, cognitive, and language abilities in later life. Current projects in the PLAY lab includes:

1. Emergence of Visual Language Perception
   a. Using eyetracking, Dr. Bosworth examines how infants recognize the difference between sign language and other body actions like gestures. She also studies how young deaf children navigate digital picture books with dynamic ASL videos.
2. Visual Listening Effort a. Dr. Bosworth has several research questions that she is trying to answer: Deaf people experience Zoom fatigue, but is it harder for deaf people who rely on lipreading? Does listening in sign language present different cognitive challenges? Is it more challenging for hearing or signers, and if so, why?
3. Parent Attitudes about Play a. Play leads to cognitive advantages for children, especially when parents engage in play with them. Not all adults believe that play leads to learning, and not all parents engage in the same play behaviors. How does this impact children’s cognitive development? Dr. Bosworth also examines here the cultural differences in attitudes and play in parents who have hearing or deaf children.
4. Deaf Children’s Tactile Exploration and Play Behaviors a. This project is funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The aim is to understand how deaf and hearing pre-schoolers explore novel objects via touch, for the purpose of play and learning in the classroom. From Jess Cuculick, Ed.D

Five peer-reviewed publications (four as 1st author) among 24 in her career, 4 current grants (involving a wise mixture of intramural, foundation and federal funders), 5 more grants that are pending or under review, an impressive record of conference presentations and speaking engagements, as well as ample committee and other services to the college and university. I further am aware that Rain is a highly valued teacher, not only at NTID but at the College of Science’s Psychology Department, where she has been instrumental in strengthening our cross-campus bonds – a goal that is very important to me and many NTID faculty. From Robert Pollard, Ph.D.

There is even more that can be said regarding Dr. Bosworth’s current accomplishments, however, I believe the above quotes clearly show the reason why the committee supported Dr. Rain Bosworth for the Scholarship Award.

- Nancy J. Marrer Chair of SAC and the committee members.

Dr. Jess Cuculick, as a 20-plus year member of the Department of Liberal Studies and one of the few Deaf qualitative researchers, has been leading cross-institutional collaborative grant and research efforts in the study of deaf health literacy in order to understand how deaf and hard-of-hearing people receive, process, and exchange health-related information in print and online. Compared to hearing individuals, deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals have relatively worse health outcomes and poor health literacy that cannot be solely explained by either reading skills or educational background. Dr. Cuculick’s publications have focused on areas including health literacy among deaf adults, health literacy disparities between deaf and hearing college students, and the relationship between Deaf culture and breastfeeding success.

In 2016 sparked by the collaboration with the University of Michigan, Brandeis University, and Dartmouth University and the reception of three NIH sub-awards, Dr. Cuculick established the Deaf Health Laboratory that has since involved the work of 15 deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows. She has made deliberate efforts to recruit and include students --- including deaf and hard-of-hearing students, students of color, and women ---  in all phases of her research and to create a lab culture that pairs qualitative and quantitative research to address critical research needs regarding the physical and mental health of the Deaf community. In addition to teaching research and dissemination skills, Dr. Cuculick has developed and taught numerous seminars on the soft skills that are critical in a deaf researcher’s career, for example, how to work with ASL interpreters, how to give an effective presentation, and how to maintain a professional network.

Dr. Cuculick has proven herself to be a talented and productive scholar who has made an impact with her qualitative research at a STEM-heavy institution; has broken through barriers as a Deaf woman scholar who has made a career change from a traditional teaching faculty to an externally-funded researcher with multiple grants in a short time; and is noted for her dedication to teaching, mentoring, and supporting Deaf scholars, leading to the creation of a pipeline for future Deaf researchers to diversify future generations of scholars.

Dr. Jason Nordhaus is a leader in general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics (GRMHD), as demonstrated by his documented history of substantial contributions to the field with more than 93 publications (2,100 citations). He is the lead author on more than 25 of his journal publications, and he is regularly invited to give presentations at other institutions and conferences

Since joining the RIT faculty, Dr. Nordhaus published an upper limit to the energy that neutrinos can provide in a supernova explosion. This is a critical, non-intuitive result that continues to be tested.  To date, it has held up as no computer simulation has ever produced a supernova with energies above his published limit.   

In May of 2017, Dr. Nordhaus and a student published three-dimensional simulations of the L2 Puppis system. By modeling how gas moves around the star, they could match what the telescopes saw only if a planet were orbiting in the system.  After they published their work in May of 2017, observers in Europe started hunting for this hypothetical planet.  In December 2017, they found it with ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array).  The success of this method of predicting hidden companions from the motion of gas lead NASA to award Dr. Nordhaus a grant to continue this work for stars that the Hubble Space Telescope is observing.   

Dr. Nordhaus' scholarly funding record is outstanding. He has received a total of 3.9 million dollars on various grants as PI, co-PI, senior personnel, or co-investigator. He is a principal investigator on grants funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation and an award of nearly $300k from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation entitled, "Lost in Translation: Removing Barriers for Deaf Participation in STEM Fields." With his CCRG colleagues, he is a co-PI on several grants received from NASA and NSF. He is also currently a co-PI on REU Site: Summer Undergraduate Research for Students who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing in Applying Mathematical and Statistical Methods to Problems from the Sciences ($303,000; PI: Dr. Bonnie Jacob), an NSF-funded project to support three-year research experiences for undergraduates (REU) program. The REU grant supports ten deaf and hard-of-hearing students each summer and includes some support for faculty working with them.

What sets Dr. Nordhaus apart from many is how he regularly includes deaf students in his research work.  Since joining RIT, he has supervised tens of undergraduate students on projects, including deaf and hard of hearing graduate students in the Bridges to the Doctorate program.  In 2016, Jason's students (presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, TX.  This was the first time a deaf student had presented their research at the AAS.  Dr. Nordhaus strives to provide his students with unique skills and research experiences that will allow them to pursue their goals in technically challenging fields.  

As a faculty member affiliated with the RIT College of Science graduate program in Astrophysical Sciences and Technology, Dr. Nordhaus is actively working to recruit deaf and hard-of-hearing students to that program, and he is also serving as the Ph.D. Readiness Director for NTID's own Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate program. In this position, he is actively preparing students who are currently in RIT master's degrees for entry into doctoral programs; which means that he plays a significant role in mentoring a new generation of deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists advanced careers in academia, government, and industry.

Dr. Nordhaus' scholarship statistics as of 10.23.2020 (data from ADS):

• 94 publications with 2,155 citations (26 publications since starting tenure track)
• 25 first-author publications with 987 citations
• h-index: 26

Funded awards since starting tenure track (see CV for complete details):

• As Principal Investigator: $710,824
• As Co-Principal Investigator: $2,180,383
• As Senior or Co-Investigator: $1,001,665
• Dollar-weighted success rate: 60.3% ($6,452,329 in total applications)

Dollar-weighted success rate: 60.3% ($6,452,329 in total applications)

Lisa Johnston, a lecturer at NTID American Sign Language and Interpreting Education (ASLIE) department since 2015, has been recognized by her students and colleagues for her effective teaching style in the classroom. Also impressive is her extensive involvement with various curriculum development efforts within her department.  A student noted, in her letter of support toward Ms. Johnston’s nomination, that she “cares deeply for her students.  She makes sure to provide us with all the resources available for us to succeed … I admire her teaching style … she is prepared and ready to go” when coming to classes.  One of Ms. Johnston’s colleagues stated that she “…demonstrated an enthusiastic and personal excellence in teaching and learning.”