Rochester Public Markets

My friend Dawn and I went to the Rochester City Public Market this morning. It is the middle of apple season here in Upstate New York and there were delicious, fresh, crisp apples as far as the eye could see.

The Rochester Public Market is run by the city and has been operating since 1905. On Saturdays there are typically over 300 vendors who sell farm fresh produce, global delicacies, and flowers.

RIT Tigers!

The hockey season started today with RIT's Women's hockey team taking on Guelph University at the Gene Polisseni Center. Pep Band is an instrumental ensemble that has the important role of playing at University functions and games to entertain, or pep up, the crowd. 

RIT Pep Band

Learning to use a lyre for the first time

RITchie the Tiger says hi to the Corner Crew - the most vocal RIT hockey fans

The RIT Pep Band is the best pep band in all the land, according the the RIT hockey commentators and I am proud to be a member for this year. As well as weekly rehearsals and a large repertoire of songs to learn, there are also chants to master. As RIT has a large Deaf and bilingual community all the chants are in ASL and English, which must seem very confusing to the opposing teams but it just how it should be at RIT. There is also live captioning of all game announcements and ASL interpreters present at every game.

Mikayla, Nicole, and Kate

Kate and Quintin

RIT Fulbright Meet and Greet

The RIT International Student Services, the Office of Graduate Education and the RIT Fulbright Scholar Association hosted a meet and greet for all Fulbright scholars at RIT tonight. There was a brief talk and the countries that RIT Fulbright scholars came from were noted. Many of the Fulbright scholars at RIT are here for two years pursuing Masters degrees but there are a few PhD scholars and postdoctoral scholars as well.

Map demonstrating the diversity of RIT Fulbright scholars

Fulbright Scholars who attended the Meet and Greet

The meeting ended with pizza and cake

Deaf International Student Association

The Deaf International Student Association (DISA) is a student club organisation at Rochester Institute of Technology / National Technical Institute for the Deaf. DISA's mission is to "provide a strong foundation and encourage the continual educational study, understanding, and love of the many global cultures and ethnicity, attained only through self-confidence and teamwork. To empower each individual with the abilities to work with a diversified background of ethnicity and culture as well as utilizing learned skills to enrich our lives with the beauty and understanding of our intentional world" (Ritpedia, n.d., para 2). 

With the message "One World, One Family", DISA runs events for students where they are able to learn about different countries, religions, cultures, histories, food, and music. At the first General Meeting for the year 2016/2017 DISA President Hamid Youssif explained the exciting calendar of cultural activities planned for this year.

DISA President Hamid Yussif

Study 1: Questionnaire Design

I am currently working to get Study 1 up and running. The purpose of study 1 is to investigate the semantic fluency skills of students who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing and students who use English and/or American Sign Language. Semantic fluency tasks involve participants naming as many exemplars of a category as possible within a fixed time period (e.g., name as many fruits as you can in 60 seconds). Analysis of participant responses in terms of the number of items produced, the number of repeated items, the number and size of subcategory clusters, and switches between clusters gives insight into how participants store and retrieve words they know from their memory.

RIT Global Day of Service

The RIT Global Day of Service brings together RIT alumni, parents, staff, students, and friends around the world to make a difference in their communities through service. It's a great way to show your spiRIT! Service events were organized across 16 US cities and 6 countries (United States, Croatia, Dubai, Ecuador, India, and Peru).

I joined the activities at Foodlink where we sorted and categorized 21 pallets of food donations left at Wegmans stores. That is the equivalent of a semi-trailer worth of food items sorted in under three hours! It was exciting to learn more about my new community and to meet local members of the RIT alumni.

RIT Fulbright Scholars Association outing

This afternoon the RIT Fulbright Scholars Association traveled to Canadice Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. We were able to get to meet each other while we kayaked, cycled, and ate delicious international foods, including s'mores around the campfire. RIT has a vibrant Fulbright community with many, many nations represented.

RIT Fulbright Scholars

Chatting with Lian van Hoof (The Netherlands) and Ahmed Ali Khan (Pakistan)

Candice Lake

Lian and I enjoying American culture with our campfire s'mores

Visit to Washington DC

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Australian Alumni Social at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC this weekend. It was great to meet so many graduates of Australian Universities now living in the United States.

While in Washington DC I had the opportunity to meet with Rowena Winiarczyk from Research Support and International Affairs at Gallaudet University. We discussed the Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Youth that has been conducted by Gallaudet University over many years.

Gallaudet University
Bilingual (ASL/English) University for the Deaf

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet'
Founder of the first school for the deaf in America

There was also some time to visit some of the 'must see' attractions in Washington DC including, the Library of Congress and the Capitol Building, and to make friends with other international visitors to Washington DC. 

Carlo and I enjoyed an afternoon at the Our Ocean Film Showcase. This was a collaboration between the National Museum of Natural History, the U.S. Department of State, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, D.C. Environmental Film Festival, and BLUE Ocean Film Festival to provide education around marine environment issues. We watched a film about the Galápagos Islands and participated in the following discussion lead by Dan Myer (International Policy Manager for Pristine Seas). The Ecuador ambassador to the US also attended the film. Carlo and I then finished of our international day with some Salvadoran cuisine and a walk around the Embassy buildings on Massachusetts Avenue.

Carlo with pupusa and tamale 

ASL 101

Today was the first day of ASL class! I'm enrolled in ASL 1 which has no assumed knowledge of ASL. There are eight students in the class who are either RIT employees or visiting scholars (including three Fulbright scholars). Our teacher is fantastic and I am looking forward to a semester working hard on my ASL proficiency.

Labor Day visit to Lake Ontario

I was lucky to spend the Labor Day weekend with Valerie and her family at the beautiful Lake Ontario. It was a busy day for wildlife and we saw a bald eagle, an osprey, hummingbirds, blue birds, and a loon. It was a marvellous way to enjoy the last days of summer in a beautiful location with such lovely people.