Friday, October 16, 2009

Gallaudet Professors' CI Journey

Gallaudet Professors Josh and Sam Swiller received their cochlear implants a couple of years ago, and this video summarizes their journey since then.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHEN did Gallaudet hire TWO CI brothers as professors!!!??? Which department?

Did GU hire them on purpose to attract deaf students to CI?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, what's wrong with the CI professors teaching at Gallaudet? They are still deaf.

Some oral deaf professors began their academic careers at Gallaudet where they acquired ASL. Some oral deaf people with CIs will teach at Gallaudet.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Li-Li's Mom said...

Anonymous, I think GU hired them on purpose to attract deaf students to Gallaudet.

Crazy choice: deaf, impressive academic backgrounds, high-impact, relevant work experience, socially-inspiring life stories, Creativity out the ears. What were they thinking?

K.L. said...

And they're fluent in ASL. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

Sam is a professor too? I thought it was just Michael Chorost who was teaching along with Josh. I have read Josh's book "Unheard" and also Chorost's "Rebuilt." Both excellent reads!
Kudos to Gally for starting to pull away from that old guard mentality and opening up to new ideas.

Anonymous said...

K. L.

Fluent? Not! I saw Josh at Gally several yrs ago.

starrynight said...

Checked Gallaudet website and it says that Sam is in the Business Dept and Josh is in the Honors Program. Are they fluent in ASL or learning ASL?

It s nice to have a wide diversity of the deaf community at Gallaudet Univ. I heard more and more students are using CI at Gallaudet and they use less ASL.

The deaf community is probably evolving with the new technology including digital hearing aids and CI. However, I am hoping that ASL will not dissolve in the future as it is a beautiful language!

Anonymous said...

Sam is a beginner. Josh is what I would call a medium ASL signer. Not fluent, and not a beginner.

kim said...

The criticism of their signing ability sort of grates. When I was in college I had professors who spoke English with thick accents. As deaf as I was I eventually got used to the accents and their abilities to communicate.

The criteria for any professor at any US college is knowledge of the subject taught, not how well they speak the mother tongue. Or sign. Deaf people need to stop judging others by signing ability.

deafdude said...

Regarding this thread:

http://aslci.blogspot.com/2009/04/hearing-aids-or-cochlear-implants-for.html

I had 100db HL(except at 250Hz) in 1998 and was aided to 35db in most frequencies. I don't know where did this 60db with HAs come from because today's HAs can dish out 70db gain. I know speech with a 100db HL aided to 30db won't be as clear as a good CI result at 30db or more rarely, 20db but HAs can still give enough benefit to develop speech and spoken language and help with lipreading. I am proof of this.

Anonymous said...

It´s so nice to see something like this, my 8 year old daughter has cochlear implants since she was 1 year old and I am gratefull that she can hear and communicate with us and with the world. For her this is natural and part of her but it´s nice to know what adults may feel and think.
My daughter still deaf and always be, and we are so proud of her, please don´t close the door to new things.