Farewell Dr Destler

Dr William Destler is retiring this month after 10 years serving as head of President of RIT. When I arrived at RIT I thought that the role of university president in the life of a university must be very different to that of the Chancellor at Australian universities. Dr Destler was very visible to students at the university. He always attended hockey games and never failed to walk through the corner crew to say hi (always to much chanting an applause). He attended student events, ate lunch with students in the university commons, created student challenges that focused on innovation and collaboration, and walked among graduates and families greeting them at commencement. Also an accomplished musician and songwriter, Dr Destler gave concerts at RIT including enjoyable and insightful songs such as Alternative Facts.

I now know that this is not typical of American culture. This is President Destler and RIT.

Mural from the RIT tunnels

#youarewelcomehere

In early June I was invited to participate in the new RIT video on the theme #youarewelcome here to show the diversity of RIT and our welcoming spirit. You can see the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTmmpfDabOc.

Showing my spirit in RIT orange

Hamid making his pitch with Dawn interpreting

The Student Alumni Union is a welcoming place for international visitors

It's official! I am RIT staff!

I have been extremely lucky to be able to extend my visa to stay another year at RIT. In this year I will continue working as a postdoctoral scholar with Professor Marc Marschark and the team in the Center for Education Research Partnerships. I am deliriously happy to have this opportunity to continue learning and studying here. As of today, I'm officially an employee of RIT!

Rink side research

I spend a lot of time in Rochester at work and at the rink. Sometimes, I work at the rink as well.

Rochester Red Wings

It's a big weekend for sport. This is Memorial long weekend and the Rochester Red Wings baseball team are having a retro weekend with all tickets $5 and all hot dogs .50 cents. My first ever baseball game was enjoyed on a gorgeous Rochester spring afternoon with friends I met through CERP Liz, Zac, Jessica, and Andy.

Awesome seats to see the Red Wing victory over Philly

NCAA Lacrosse Finals

Pep Band road trip to Boston today! There were only 25 of us who could make it to Boston for the NCAA Lacrosse finals but they were 25 members of the finest pep band in the land and we played out hearts out at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. The crowd attendance was 31,560 which is the biggest audience I think I will ever play! Unfortunately we were defeated 15-7 but the Salisbury University Seagulls.  

I am no closer to understanding the rules of lacrosse but I'm excited for season and determined to at least work out some of the rules.

Gillette Stadium, Massachusetts

RIT Tigers!

PeP Band selfie with our new conductor Megan

The End of my Fulbright

Today was the final day of my Fulbright Fellowship. During my Fulbright I have collected data for five studies examining:

1. Semantic fluency skills of students who were Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing (DHH), hearing, and users of English and/or American Sign Language.
2. Students’ perceptions of word typicality related to category membership.
3. Students’ categorization skills and their cognitive flexibility in re-categorizing words.
4. The speech intelligibility of DHH college students.
5. The sign intelligibility of American Sign Language users.

I wasn’t sure where my Fulbright journey would take me, but at the outset I imagined that it would end at a tangible destination. A list of submitted journal papers. Conference papers to present. Future research projects in preparation. A check list of tasks to indicate a successful scholarship. However, as I check the final items off the list, I am overwhelmed by a feeling that these tangible outcomes are not the destination that I thought they were. As Henry Miller said, “one’s destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things”. That is where my Fulbright journey has taken me. To a world that is bigger and brighter, more challenging and more rewarding than I knew. A world full of new friends, new ideas, and of exciting possibilities that I will be exploring for the rest of my life.

RIT Power Shutdown

What happens when there is a campus wide power shutdown that lasts longer than expected? You have to go old school and read an actual book!

RIT Staff Appreciation Picnic

Today was the annual RIT staff appreciation picnic, held in the Gordon Field House. We got to high-five Ritchie, make our own Garbage Plates (this is a food that Rochester is known for), and there were arcade games and Zumba classes to keep us entertained. 

Game station

Dawn and I represented team CERP

More Cultural Exchanges

Another opportunity for cultural exchange today. I ordered a lemon, lime and bitters and was met with confusion and curiosity. I am pleased to say the manager at McGregors did a stellar job in making his first ever lemon, lime and bitters. One friend thought it tasted fantastic, the other I felt was trying to not use the word repulsive!

A typically Australian drink

Speech Pathology Australia National Conference

This week is the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference which is being held in Sydney. I am unable to attend this year but have contributed to two presentations at this year's conference:

McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2017, May). Consonant acquisition by 26,008 children in 31 countries across 27 languages.

Verdon, S., Armstrong, H., Basso, R., Blake, H., Crowe, K., Heine, C. … Webster, K (2017, May). Innovations and evidence-based practice for working in a culturally and linguistically diverse society: A summary of the Speech Pathology Australia position paper and clinical guidelines for working in a culturally and linguistically diverse society.

NCAA Men's Lacrosse

Today the Tigers played in the men's lacrosse semifinals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) league against Wesleyan University. This was the first lacrosse game I've ever seen and it was exciting, even though I did not know the rules and no one in the band was able to explain what was going on! RIT were victorious 22-9 so next week we are off to Boston for the Division III finals. Watch out Boston - RIT Pep Band is coming!

An enthusiastic Tiger fan

Tiger Stadium

Rochester Lilac Festival

The Rochester Lilac Festival is the largest free festival of its kind in North America. Over 10 days, this festival is full of activities: musical, artistic, culinary, and botanical. Gemmie and I managed to make it for the last afternoon of the festival which we thoroughly enjoyed in spite of the inconvenient precipitation. I also fulfilled my Fulbright duties of increasing cultural understanding my introducing Gemmie to my favourite Canadian snack - Poutine!

Lilacs!

Kate and Gemmie

Introducing Gemmie to the Canadian cuisine POUTINE!

RIT Commencement

This is graduation week at RIT. I took the opportunity to see how this process different from Australian universities. Graduation week begins with a big ceremony in the field house, Commencement, which graduating students from all colleges attend. Each college then has its own graduation ceremony for its students. Commencement was an exciting ceremony which I viewed from the overflow seating in the Gene Polessini Center (which is currently not an ice rink). President Destler gave a rousing speech which he delivered in Sim Com (ASL signs and English at the same time) which you can read here.

PhD graduates from all colleges walked the stage with their supervisors and were hooded. Speeches were given by graduating students and past students. There were so many smiles on the faces of students, family, and faculty.

Graduate marshalling area

President Destler's final commencement address

Multilingual College Students

I am working on a piece of writing for the practitioner magazine describing the evidence base for multilingual language acquisition by children with hearing loss. I was lucky enough to be able chat with of the very multilingual Deaf students at RIT today. This is Cristophorus. Cristophorus grew up in Indonesia speaking Indonesian with his family and at school, and also learning English at school. While in Indonesia he learnt American Sign Language from books and tutors and friends, and later learnt Bisindo (Indonesian Sign Language) from other friends. Now a pre-med student at RIT, Cristophorus is a fluent user of spoken English and spoken Indonesian, communicates in American Sign Language and Bisindo, and is currently learning Spanish ... just for fun.

Cristophorus and Kate comparing languages

IJSLP Guest Editorial Position

Sarah Masso, Suzanne Hopf and I have been selected to be guest editors of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology Special Issue – Conference Proceedings. We will be working with IJSLP editor Professor Kirrie Ballard and CEO of Speech Pathology Australia Gail Mulcair to develop this issue of the journal.

Imagine RIT

Imagine RIT is RIT's Innovation and Creativity Festival which is held in May each year. It is  a campus-wide event that showcases the innovation and creativity of RIT students, faculty and staff. Exhibits focus on being interactive and hands-on, and the campus is full of diverse  exhibitions, research projects, and entertainment. One inspiring project was the Get Up and Go Motorized Pediatric Stander Kit for children with mobility difficulties designed by RIT students.

Pep Band played an hour bracket, in the freezing cold rain, and it is an experience I will never forget!

The RIT Theme Park Enthusiasts: Theme Park Engineering 3.0

Elizabeth Jackson Machmer explaining
Professional Interactions Using Mobile Apps Research 

A concrete canoe

Double-decker bicycle

SpringFest

This week was SpringFest at RIT, a week in Rochester that was much colder than the week of FreezeFest! The college activities board had a great line up of activities to celebrate Spring including concerts, tie-dying, barbecues, jumping castles (also known as a bouncy house), and the annual Dance in the Dark. On Sunday morning the Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority organised the "Paint me Pink 5km" which eventually started after being delayed by pouring rain and freezing temperatures. I finished, which was amazing given how many important body parts I could not feel ... hands, feet, ears! I didn't even break a sweat!

Painted pink at the end of the run

RIT Fulbright Student Association Elections

Incoming e-board: Yussu Guy, Gantsetseg Myagmarjav,
Issa Victor Hafiri, Evgenia Tranevskaya and Edward Tetteh

Visit to the University of Oulu

I was fortunate to meet Dr Taina Välimaa from the University of Oulu in Central Finland at the European Cochlear Implant Users Symposium in Helsinki last week. She invited to me to travel to Oulu to visit the university and meet with faculty and doctoral students. 

Dr Taina Välimaa, Professor Sari Kunnari, and Kate with traditional Suomi outfits

We had a great day discussing our previous and future research and identifying areas of potential collaboration for future projects. I was treated to a tour of Oulu and surrounds including being able to walk on the bay at Toppilansaari which was still frozen solid at the end of April. I also tried some traditional Finish foods typical of central Finland including reindeer and leipäjuusto, a Finnish cheese dish that is baked for dessert.

Kate standing on the bay at Toppilansaari

Leipäjuusto with cloudberry jam

Visit to Estonia

Just because I could, I took the ferry from Helsinki to Estonia for a Sunday exploring the fascinating historic city of Tallinn. I visited many museums to learn about the long history of this region of Europe and the city of Tallinn, including the Great Guild Hall, the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum, Kalev Marzipan Museum, Tallinn Town Wall and St Nicholas' Church and Museum.

View from atop the Town Wall

Tallinn Old Town

As well as exploring the old city, I took the tram to see the house of Peter The Great where a museum is now housed, and the Kadriorg Palace and Art Museum.

The summer house of Peter The Great and Catherine I

The Baroque Kadriorg Palace

European Cochlear Implant Users Symposium

I'm in Helsinki for the European Cochlear Implant Users (EURO-CIU) Symposium. The EURO-CIU Symposium brings together Cochlear Implant users and professionals around Finland and Europe. The Symposium brings together presented who will focus on six topics related to living with a cochlear implant: Health Economics, Music and Cognitive Development, Peer Support and Rehabilitation, Accessibility to Education and Lifelong Learning, Multilingualism, and Design for All.

My keynote presentation was "Hei! 你好! !مرحبا: Language acquisition in a multilingual world". As the conference was multilingual my presentation was simultaneously interpreted into spoken Finnish and Finnish Sign Language and real-time captioned in Finnish and English. 

Here is the abstract:

The growing diversity of D/deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners creates challenges for educators and clinicians. With close to 8,000 language spoken in the world and increasing levels of mobility, the linguistic diversity of DHH learners accessing education and therapy services has never been greater. This presentation will describe parental and professional perspectives on choices about communication mode and language use for DHH children. Current perspectives on multilingualism, focusing on spoken language multilingualism, will be described and related to DHH learners and their families, and the educators and clinicians who work with them. The available research describing the speech and language outcomes for DHH children living and learning in multilingual environments will also be summarized. The need for interdisciplinary collaboration for supporting, assessing, and monitoring the speech and language development of DHH multilingual learners will be discussed.

Rochester: Day 5

Today was my parents last day in Rochester and we had fun scheduled. First coffee with Professor Marschark and Georgianna at the CERP lab, and then The Strong National Museum of Play! The Strong is an interactive, collections-based museum devoted to play and houses the world’s largest collection of historical materials related to play, the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play. We were lucky enough to get a behind the scenes tour of the museum from my friend Tara, who showed us the library and the archives and told us many amazing facts about the collections held at The Strong. We finished our day with dinner with my good friend Dawn from CERP.

Sesame Street allows children to explore letters, words, numbers, and diversity

Reading Adventure Land is like walking inside an artifact-rich, life-size pop-up book 

The Berenstain Bears: Down a Sunny Dirt Road

Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden

Rochester: Day 4

Mount Hope Cemetery is a remarkable Victorian cemetery located on 196 acres of parkland in central Rochester. It was dedicated in 1838 and has 80 mausoleums, Egyptian obelisks, fountains, gothic chapels and over 350,000 graves. Many people important to both Rochester and the US rest at Mount Hope including Frederick Douglass (African-American social reformer who escaped slavery in Maryland to become a national leader of the abolitionist movement) and Susan B. Anthony (Social reformer, women's rights activist, and leader of the women's suffrage movement who anti-slavery petitions and became New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society).

Frederick Douglass

Susan B. Anthony

Civil War Graves

Next, lunch at Lake Ontario Beach Park and then onto the Rochester Museum and Science Center. This museum's mission is to "stimulates broad community interest and understanding of science and technology, and their impact — past, present, and future — on our lives" and it delivered. The highlight for me was seeing the Bridges for Brain Injury Wildlife Rockstars. It is not often that you get up close to a porcupine munching on a granola bar or a coyote!

Snowflakes Up Close exhibit by RIT Professor Michael Peres

A perfect day was finished off with dinner with my parents and Professor Marschark and Tommie Sarchet from CERP at the best Italian restaurant in Rochester!