NTID/RIT Lands Third Major Award To Lead Global Effort For Educating Deaf

From: NTID - 18 Feb 2003

Contact:    Karen E. Black
                585.475.6840 (v/t)
                kebnmr@rit.edu
 
NTID/RIT Lands Third Major Award
To Lead Global Effort For Educating Deaf
 
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 18-The Nippon Foundation has awarded the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology $1.19 million to continue its leading role in improving education and career opportunities for deaf people around the world.

        To date, The Nippon Foundation has awarded NTID $3.28 million to help colleges across the globe improve technological education for their deaf students through a program called Postsecondary Education Network International (PEN-International), conducted in partnership with Tsukuba College of Technology in Japan.

        Deaf students attending specific colleges in Japan, China, Russia, and the Philippines will continue to benefit from PEN-International's expertise through improved curriculum, increased access, new technology, multi-media labs and trained faculty. This year, programs in Beijing and in Prague, Czechoslovakia, have been added to the growing list of PEN-International collaborators.

        "Each country is in a different stage of educating deaf people at the college level. Each has its own set of goals," said James DeCaro, Ph.D., former Dean of NTID, and director of PEN-International. "Add to that mix each country's unique written, spoken and signed languages, its own culture and technical knowledge, and it becomes a very exciting, multi-layered project."

        For more information about PEN-International and its global partners, visit www.pen.ntid.rit.edu.
        The first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, NTID, one of eight colleges within RIT, offers educational programs and access and support services to the 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live and socialize with 14,000 hearing students on RIT's Rochester, N.Y., campus. Web address http://www.rit.edu/NTID.

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