Category Archives: networking

What is the impact of mutual mentoring networks such as The Mind Hears?

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– Michele

Why does representation of disabled academics decrease through the academic ranks? 1)support also decreases with academic rank 2) academic ableism is under recognized and 3) lack of role models. We need mutual mentoring networks and resources such as The Mind Hears.

For the 2020 Geological Society of America meeting back in October, Ana and I prepared a recorded presentation on how The Mind Hears provides a necessary mutual mentoring forum for deaf and hard-of-hearing academics. Because of the pandemic, the on-line meeting consisted of pre-recorded talks. Below, you will find our 11 minute 30 second recording. Here is a table of contents for the recording that may be helpful if you want to jump to a specific topic:

  • 0.00 – When you consider less than ideal communication settings, lack of support and relative isolation of deaf/HoH academics who work at hearing institutions, you can see why few deaf/HoH can thrive in academia
  • 2:51 – In 2018 we started The Mind Hears blog to create a mutual mentoring network for deaf/HoH academics.
  • 3:33 – Outlines the expanding content and impact of the blog.
  • 5:18 – The recording shifts to discussing the statistics of disabled academics and the decreasing levels of support with academic rank that mirror decreasing representation. (see also post on where are the deaf/HoH academics)
  • 8:12 – In addition to lack of accommodation support, folks at all academic ranks encounter academic ableism, focus on the medical model of disability over the social/cultural models and lack of role models.
  • 10:12 – Examples of mutual mentoring for disabled scientists (this was at a geological sciences meeting).
  • 10:47 – Conclusions

You can also see the video on YouTube at this link that has the chapters time stamped.

Conquering faculty meetings (or not…) when deaf/hard of hearing

advocacy, daily grind, meetings, networking, , , , ,

-Ana

Making it as a deaf/hard of hearing (HoH) academic can often feel like a game of whack-a-mole. Between research activities, teaching duties, and that large nebulous category ‘service,’ communication challenges lurk around every corner. Some I can troubleshoot fairly quickly— i.e. arranging a classroom so there is walking space between desks and I can approach my students to better hear them (mole whacked!). Other challenges have required a few more tries, but I’ve eventually figured out viable solutions—i.e. belatedly acquiring an FM system was a game changer when it came to group discussions of papers (mole missed, mole missed, mole whacked!). But there is a situation that I have not yet been able to master, even after many, many years: the departmental faculty meeting.

I had less than a passing knowledge of that special faculty obligation that is the Departmental Faculty Meeting when I started out as an assistant professor. I’d heard some friends and my spouse—people who’d gotten faculty positions before me—mention them, usually accompanied by eye rolls. But I didn’t really have any expectations about what these meetings entailed or what my role in them might be.

Cue over to my first faculty meeting as a deaf/HoH faculty in a predominantly hearing institution. I walked into a an overly large room (overly large for the number of people we had) that looked somewhat like this:

A room with chairs in rows, in which a faculty meeting is taking place. Stick figures are scattered throughout, with one twisting and turning her head in an attempt to speech read what is being said by people in all corners of the room.

We were 15-20 faculty seated in a classroom meant for over 40, with everybody seemingly intent in maximizing their distance from all others. After an hour of feeling like a bobblehead as I desperately twisted my neck trying to speech read my department chair in front and my colleagues in all corners of the room, I came to three conclusions:

1. Faculty (who would have thought!) are just like undergrads, and will beeline for chairs in the last rows of a room

2. Important stuff got discussed in faculty meetings (I think I caught some words that sounded like budgets and curriculum…)

3. I was dead meat, because I could not follow anything that was being said

So I went home and cried. My first year as an assistant professor, I cried after every single faculty meeting. Granted, we didn’t have that many faculty meetings back then, but enough to confirm my deep-rooted fear that I was certainly not going to survive this career path. It was clear to me in my first year that faculty meetings were whipping me soundly; if I were keeping score I would call it: Faculty Meetings 1–Ana 0.

Of course the obvious thing to do would have been to ask my department chair to change the setup of the faculty meetings. After all, my colleagues knew I was hard of hearing and relied on hearing aids for communication. But I was terrified that if my department caught whiff of how much I struggled to hear, this would sow doubts about my competence as a teacher and doom my tenure prospects. Besides, although I had a long history of self-reliance, I had zero experience in self-advocacy. Among my many thoughts were “What in the world falls under the ‘reasonable’ umbrella in reasonable accommodation?” and “oh, wait, I’m not a US citizen, does the ADA [American with Disabilities Act] even cover me?” (I still don’t know the answer to this one).

Towards the end of the academic year I found some courage to request CART (Communication Active Real Time Translation) for a final retreat-style faculty meeting. The captionists were to sit next to me and type out all discussions. My chair knew about the CART, but I (foolishly) didn’t alert the faculty. At the beginning of the meeting, a colleague expressed discomfort about the presence of unknown people in the room (the captionists). Though an explanation brought a quick apology, I felt marked. Added to the captioning time lag that at times jarred with what I could hear, I scored another loss: Faculty Meetings 2–Ana 0.

A transmitter with an omnidirectional microphone placed on a table.

My second year brought a new department chair, a tiny increase in self-confidence, and also an increase in the frequency of faculty meetings. Aaagh! I finally resolved to approach my chair and request that faculty be seated in a round square table format during meetings so that I would have a better shot at speech reading. Simultaneously, I acquired a new FM system and a transmitter with an omnidirectional microphone — a forerunner of the one pictured here. I would place it on the center of the table and voila! OK, so it wasn’t quite 100%, and I was still missing most of the banter and jokes, but jumping from 50 to 90% comprehension (These are completely unscientific numbers. Naturally, there’s no way for me to ever tell how much I’m missing; my estimate is based on my confusion level at the end of meetings) felt wonderful. This was it! I was going to nail this faculty thing! New score: Faculty Meetings 2–Ana 1!

Then my department grew. 

Schematic of a conference setting in a hollow square format.

Okay, I get the fact that department success is gauged in part by growth. And yes, improving faculty-to-student ratios is always a good thing. But growth meant that in order to sit all of us in rectangle we were now sitting like this:

Ummm, with a gaping hole in the middle, where is microphone transmitter to go? I started putting it next to me, but of course this makes it much less likely to pick up voices from those sitting farther away. I considered going back to CART, but at this point I had had my first kid and often had to rush out of faculty meeting before the end in order to make it to daycare pickup; I couldn’t bring myself to subject others to my sometimes ad hoc schedule… so I muddled along and considered this round lost. New score: Faculty Meetings 3–Ana 1.

A Lego knight with shield, sword and helmet. It is pretty happy that no faculty meeting can hurt it now.

Fast forward a few years—the department kept growing. We were now meeting in a large room that combined my two meeting nightmares: square table arrangements with a central hole AND faculty sitting in rows (we no longer all fit around the square). Even worse… recall that faculty are just like undergrads….most actively choose to sit as far away from the center/front of the room if given an option. So much for our “round table.” 

I started to cultivate the attitude recommended by some of my hearing colleagues… faculty meeting, bah, waste of time, place where people go to hear themselves talk, nothing happens there that couldn’t be solved more quickly through email….bah! OK, so attitude was my new weapon armor. By my calculations we were now at this score: Faculty Meetings 4–Ana 2. Ha! A comeback!

Schematic of a conference set up that involves chair lining up the perimeter of a room, as well as table set in a U-shape, with a peninsula in the center also lined with chairs.

A few years later, further department growth and another new chair. But I told this one about my difficulties following discussions whenever we sat in rows. Alas, we were now too many faculty to sit in any sort of rectangular format that would fit in a room. I had started in a department with around 20 people and we now had more than 50! To maximize my visual contact with faculty in a room, we came up with this pretty funky rectangle with peninsula shape. Ummm… perhaps we can call this score: Faculty Meetings 4–Ana 3? We would have patented this design, but there were two problems. The perimeter of the room (around the rectangle) still had to be lined with chairs in order to have enough seating should everybody decide to show up. And see observation #1 above: faculty are just like undergrads. This means that people prefer to take the perimeter spots before they take any rectangle spots. And it turns out that people prefer to STAND IN A CORNER of the room before taking ANY of the peninsula spots in the center. New score: Faculty Meetings 5–Ana 3.

So we get to where we are today. I catch myself wondering how traitorous it is for me to dream of a smaller department while also cultivating a blasé attitude towards faculty meetings so that I release myself from feeling obligated to try and follow the discussions. In a way, this outcome is an anthesis of what a blog post on thriving in academia with deafness should be. Over a decade of trying to find a solution for a way to participate effectively in what should be a routine part of faculty life has led instead to something that resembles an arms race and I have no solution to offer. At the same time, however, this post on getting by in academia with deafness portrays pretty effectively the reality of trying to adjust to shifting communication settings as a deaf/HoH academic. I hesitate to sound as if I’m advocating “managing” as opposed to “thriving” when it comes to facing the fluctuating demands of academic life, but sometimes, while we’re whacking those moles, “managing” is what we can do.

Pandemic addendum: I wrote this post before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, never imagining the ways in which my faculty meeting odyssey would be upended yet again. The thought of meeting in-person with 40-50 colleagues now seems so distant, and new “moles” have appeared in our now virtual faculty meetings (ahem…thinking here of all those who choose to speak with their zoom cameras OFF). Yet I’ve also picked up some new management strategies in the interim… For example, Michele’s recent post points out some of the silver linings for deaf/HoH academics in working from home. And from Paige Glotzer’s profile I’ve now learned of the existence of Catchbox throwable microphones; if when life returns to normal, could this be my new faculty meeting strategy? I can’t wait to see…

To Hear, or Not to Hear? The Mental Gymnastics of Hearing Device Use

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A word cloud showing the most common appearing words in the post in different colors.
Alt text. A word cloud showing the most common appearing words in the post in different colors.

-Sarah Sparks

I had planned to write this post about listening fatigue, but as I began writing I realized that a related yet rarely discussed topic resonated more in the moment. This post is my attempt at addressing the complexity of that topic.

The mental gymnastics involved in deciding whether and/or when to use hearing devices is not discussed often—at least publicly. This can be an uncomfortable topic because the decisions about amplification use made by deaf and hard of hearing people have an impact on how we are viewed within our professions, the willingness of other people to take our accommodation needs seriously, and the assumptions made by others about our communication needs and preferences. Ideally, decisions about amplification use should be made freely. That doesn’t always happen in the context of an audist society. Some might argue that because of audism (the belief that hearing and speaking are superior to deafness and signing, and the consequent discrimination), none of these decisions are ever truly free.

I am against audism in all its forms, and I also believe it is possible to genuinely like and want amplified sound for its own sake, not because of attempts to assimilate to the hearing world. But perhaps more often than we would like to admit, deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) professionals who use hearing devices make decisions about device use based on what others expect rather than what feels best to us as individuals. 

I identify as deaf. I am a full-time, bilateral cochlear implant (CI) user who also communicates in and loves both American Sign Language (ASL) and English. In times past I would wear my CI processors from the moment I woke up in the morning until about an hour before going to bed at night, sometimes topping 18 hours of device use in a day. That was exhausting, and I’m glad that I have since found a CI use pattern more suited to my needs. These days I am still a full-time CI user in that my device use averages approximately 8 hours per day, but rarely do I use my processors outside of professional situations. I’m a pediatric audiologist, and I work with many hearing children and their parents as well as the hearing parents of deaf and hard of hearing children. I care about communicating with all of them in their native language whenever possible. Because of this, my processors go on as soon as I walk into clinic in the morning and they come off as soon as I’m on my way home in the evening. If I have class or a meeting in the evening, generally I will keep them on for that purpose. 

Mostly, I’m comfortable with my current CI usage. But my choices come with unique kinds of personal and professional costs that affect neither hearing professionals nor deaf professionals who don’t use devices. The decision to use my CIs as frequently (or infrequently) as I do has a downside that I don’t discuss often: the constant need to evaluate why I use them (or not). Every day, I notice how my decisions interact with others’ conscious and subconscious expectations for me not just as a deaf person, but also as a person with auditory access. Confident as I am in my decisions to switch up my communication—ASL, spoken English, or written English depending on the situation—often I find myself wondering about my CI use pattern and messages that others may infer, independent of anything I say directly.

Does using my CIs full time lead others to believe that I value spoken language over signed language? Maybe I need to clarify every other day that I love ASL and that spoken-language access isn’t the only reason I use my CIs…

Do my coworkers and other acquaintances see my CIs and assume that if my processors are on, they should always speak instead of sign? Maybe I should use my processors only when I want people to speak to me, but then I wouldn’t get to use them for many of the sounds I genuinely want to hear…

How does my CI use impact the willingness of employers and conference/event organizers to fulfill requests for accommodations? In the past, people have heard the clarity of my speech and thought I was exaggerating when I described the limits of my CI hearing. Maybe I’ll have to explain for the thousandth time that my speech is so clear because I wasn’t born deaf, lost my hearing progressively, and don’t hear nearly as well as I speak. Maybe this is why some deaf professionals who can hear and speak choose not to…

If I prefer to speechread my way through certain kinds of interactions, am I leading others to believe that I don’t need visual language? Maybe the access problems I experience are my own fault for opting to communicate in two languages…

If I remove my CI processors for a few hours while among colleagues in my profession, will they see me as irresponsible and make wrong assumptions about how I counsel my own CI patients? Maybe they’ll lose trust in me as a clinician or researcher and assume that I’m recommending lackadaisical or capricious device use…

My signing is clearly non-native: if I’m around other deaf professionals, is wearing my processors (even without batteries) necessary to remind them that I’m not a hearing person? Maybe they’ll see me as just another hearing audiologist if I’m not wearing them… or despite my wearing them…

Are my CIs sending the message that deaf/HoH people can be audiologists and hearing scientists only if we use CIs? Maybe I’m hurting someone else’s opportunities unintentionally just by trying to be deaf in the way that feels most okay for me…

What message does my observable CI use pattern send about deaf/HoH professionals who don’t use hearing devices at all or use their devices differently than I do? Maybe my own decisions affect whether they can get their access needs met…These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when I’m deciding whether to turn on my artificial, electronic auditory access. Needing to think through these and other costs of my CI use pattern is almost as exhausting as listening fatigue itself. Multiple times a day, I have to decide which is more important: using my CIs in the ways that feel best to me, or using them in ways that are least likely to result in negative consequences for me and other deaf/HoH professionals. Every day, I have to decide which battles I’m willing to fight and how my choices about CI use affect my ability to do so. I know that I can’t be the only deaf CI user who struggles with navigating these concerns both inside and outside of academia.

A dark haired woman, with hair pulled back and dark-framed glasses is smiling. She wears a dark colored blazer and has a cochlear implant.
Alt text. A dark haired woman, with hair pulled back and dark-framed glasses is smiling. She wears a dark colored blazer and has a cochlear implant.

Dr. Sarah Sparks: Dr. Sparks holds a clinical Doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.) from Gallaudet University. She has experience in a variety of clinical settings, including a university clinic, private practice, school for the deaf, and two pediatric hospitals. She completed her final year of clinical education at Boston Children’s Hospital where she also held a fellowship in the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program. She is currently studying at Gallaudet for a Ph.D. in Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences. Her clinical and research interests include pediatrics, vestibular assessment and rehabilitation, cochlear implants, the audiologist’s role in counseling and self-advocacy skill development, and audiology services provided in American Sign Language. Her Ph.D. dissertation research will focus on vestibular dysfunction and its impact on deaf/HoH children.

Profile: Alex Lu

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PhD Student, University of Toronto, Canada

Field of expertise: Computational Biology

Years of experience (since start of PhD): 5 years 

Describe your hearing: Profoundly deaf; I’m oral and voice for myself, but I use ASL interpreters for professional interactions

Background

I grew up mainstreamed in Vancouver. For most of grade school, I used hearing aids —back when I was in elementary school, we still had those clunky FM systems that attached to your hearing aids through wires and boots. I was lucky to have a hearing resource teacher who recognized the importance of sign language, and she brought in a Deaf teacher to teach me and a few other Deaf/hard-of-hearing students the basics in grade 9. In grade 11, I decided to stop using my hearing aids entirely. Part of my decision was practical—I had a progressive hearing loss, and it was getting to the point where I felt like my hearing aids weren’t helping enough to be worth the headache they gave me from amplifying everything. But the other reason was because I had grown to resent what they represented: how hearing people always expected me to “fix” myself to be acceptable to them. My parents and teachers were furious—I was in the middle of a highly intensive International Baccalaureate program and they didn’t know how I would get through it. But I managed to cobble together strategies, including basic ASL and borrowing notes from classmates. I’ve used ASL interpretation for my academic needs ever since. 

I’m also queer, and outside of academia, I do a lot of activism in bridging Deaf and queer communities. For a while before my PhD (and even well into it), I was active in many non-profits. Some of my fondest memories include negotiating accessibility in Pride boardrooms, emceeing Deaf poets for spoken word festival events, and moderating all-Deaf panels about prison justice. 

How did you get to where you are?

Many people in academia will talk about how they’ve always known what they’ve wanted to study since they were very small. I am definitely not one of those people. Rather, I got to my current interests by taking opportunities as they arose, and by being receptive to advice. I began studying computational biology as an undergraduate because a family friend mentioned it might appeal to me. I had many interests and didn’t know whether I wanted to major in English or history or a science; I figured that their advice was as good as any. As I worked through my degree, I met a graduate student who asked me to volunteer for a lab that wanted someone with computational skills, and I specifically got involved in image analysis because that was the data the lab worked with. That experience opened the door to my PhD; I applied to just two graduate schools upon finishing my undergraduate, and I figured that if I didn’t get into either, I would just start my career. But one graduate school liked my background enough that they accepted me, and I’ve been working in image analysis and computer vision ever since. 

That isn’t to say that I am not passionate about what I do; I love working on challenges in big biological image datasets, and it really challenges my creative problem solving skills. But I am fundamentally a very flexible person, and I can easily see alternative histories where I stumbled into something radically different—comparative literature, maybe, or psychology—and would have been equally as happy and passionate about that. In retrospect, taking opportunities as they arose was a very good strategy for me as a marginalized disabled person—it meant that I was always surrounded by people who were eager to invite me into their space, so I attribute a lot of my success to being easy-going enough that I could let these people guide my journey. 

What is the biggest professional challenge? How do you mitigate this challenge?

Anything that involves travel. I never know whether I will be able to find qualified accessibility services when I travel for conferences or other academic commitments. For conferences, my school has been terrific about having my regular academic ASL interpreters fly out with me: we have flown to New York, Los Angeles, and Vancouver together, and that guarantees that I can be fully involved in the important networking connections that are being made there. However, this is not a problem I have fully solved. I’m due to spend three months in Switzerland for a research exchange soon, and since they use a different sign language than mine, I wasn’t able to find local services. I’ve had to come up with more creative solutions; my current plan is to have my interpreters in Toronto Skype with me remotely for regular meetings, and I will have to see how this works out. But in general, I think about academic mobility a lot for disabled people. While a lot of my able-bodied peers are able to take jobs and opportunities anywhere in the world, I feel like there are more hurdles for me, and I’m trying to find ways to not let this limit the steps I can take in my career. 

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I have an awesome accessibility plan with my school, which gives me “block times.” Three or four afternoons a week, I have an ASL interpreter present for any needs that might pop up: a collaborator or student showing up for a meeting, impromptu chats with my supervisor or colleagues, seminars that I learn about last-minute but seem interesting. The interpreter is booked regardless of there’s something happening or not, and if it turns out to be a quiet afternoon, she spends her time on prep or coordination. 

This accommodation has really made a massive impact on my success in my program and career. For example, it makes collaborations a lot easier: while I could book interpretation for each specific meeting happening, having to set a date three weeks ahead to confirm interpretation is a lot less convenient than a collaborator just dropping in with short notice to discuss how a project is proceeding. Similarly, I don’t have to devote a lot of energy into keeping abreast of departmental and campus events to be able to request interpretation ahead of time—I can spontaneously go to seminars as other graduate students mention them to me. It’s really leveled the playing field a lot in terms of how much time and energy I have to devote to being engaged and available as a scientist, compared to hearing people. 

What advice would you give your former self?

You work way better 9 to 5! I can’t believe how much more productive I became after I started sleeping 8 hours a night and giving myself more downtime—sometimes fewer working hours is more! 

Any funny stories you want to share?

I once helped host an ASL-interpreted theatre production. I taught the director how to say “thank you” in ASL, so she could wave goodbye to the community members I had invited as they were leaving the show. Unfortunately, between the start and end of the play, she forgot that the sign starts from the mouth, not the chin, and ended up signing “fuck you” all night… (People had a good sense of humor about it).

I owe my career to the invention of email

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-Michele

The title of this post says it all, really. Several times a week I marvel at all the work communication that I can do now that would have been extremely difficult several decades ago. I earned my PhD in 1996. So, I remember the days of making physical presentation slides, where you had to use special film and rush to the developing place in order to get your slides produced before the meeting. I also remember searching the World Wide Web for the very first time. I realize that I’m dating myself in these reminisciings and you are probably impatient with me to get to the point.

Email was around when I was in graduate school, but, at that time, most professionals relied on phoning each other to exchange ideas and get information. At my request, the Dean’s office of my graduate school installed a TTY for me to use for making professional phone calls. I used it a few times and I was very grateful that the captionists relayed voiced information so that I didn’t have to piece together the message from fragments heard on my amplified phone. For example, I used this for some job interviews (see our post on disclosing deafness in job search).

Around my third year of my PhD, I was also having serious doubts if an academic career was for me. This is not uncommon for any graduate students but my deafness exacerbated a sense of not belonging in academia. I didn’t know any deafened professors or researchers. How does one have a successful academic career with deafness? How will I follow discussions at meetings? How will I hear my students’ comments? How will I communicate with colleagues on the phone?

I’m still asking some of these questions and The Mind Hears blog is doing a great job of probing these questions (e.g., teaching large classes post). Fortunately, the last question is now moot. Email allows us to communicate with colleagues, exchange ideas and get questions answered. I don’t have to worry about how my voice sounds or whether I can hear folks. I don’t have to fuss with the complications of the relay service, though I still use my new captioned phone when necessary.

Do I ever miss being able to use the telephone? Heck no! I far prefer email or talking in person than using the phone. Recently Ana and were chatting with a hearing person and they suggested that we contact someone by phone. Ana and I looked at each other and I could tell from her face that she was thinking the same thing as me. A combination of “Ew! Why use the phone when you can email?” and “Eek! Don’t make me use the phone!”.  When I need an answer from someone on my campus, I take the opportunity to stroll over to their office.  Sometimes I get asked “Why didn’t you just phone rather than walk over here?” I laugh and say “It’s good to get out and about and besides, now I’ve had the chance to visit you.” If I choose to, I can use these encounters as opportunities to talk about my deafness. But honestly, the work of educating the hearing community is draining so I prefer to have some control over when and where educational moments occur.

I marvel that while I’ve met many deaf and hard of hearing academics that are younger than me, I’ve not yet met one older than myself who has navigated an academic career with significant deafness (i.e., not age related).  I wonder if this is because I was the leading edge of the email revolution that changed the way academics communicate. Academics even a few years my senior had to rely on telephones for networking. The thought of that makes me deeply appreciative of starting my academic career when I did. What an amazing and empowering time this is to be an academic! I’m grateful for the luck of living on this side of the email revolution. Thank you email!

So, I will end with this Haiku:

    The telephone sits on my desk
    Gathering much dust
    While I type and weave science

P.S. The increasing utilization of remote video conferencing is presenting new challenges for us deaf and hard of hearing academics. Who wants to contribute a The Mind Hears post on navigating these settings?

When to tell? Applying for jobs when you are deaf or hard of hearing

job searches, networking, , , ,

-Ana

Going on the job market was a fraught decision for me. As a postdoc considering tenure-track faculty positions, I relied on hearing aids and lip-reading for communication, but, due to my background, I was unaware not just of assistive technologies that could help with communication, but of the very existence of campus offices dedicated to providing accommodations. My struggles in grad school and as a postdoc had left me with severe doubts (enough to fill another blog post) about whether academia was a career path I could follow. Despite my misgivings, a supportive advisor encouraged me to try my hand at the job market, thus setting the stage for a second set of excruciating decisions to be made: What should I tell the search committees about my hearing loss? When should I reveal it? How much should I tell?

If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Ryan Seslow’s wonderful post about the numerous concerns a deaf/hard-of-hearing (HoH) applicant might have concerning equal consideration from search committees. Regardless of regulations to prevent discrimination (and such rules likely do not exist in every country), every step of the hiring process has potential for bias against candidates with hearing loss. Also sobering is Michele’s recent post about the leaky pipeline for deaf and hard-of-hearing academics. Could bias against deaf/HoH candidates during the hiring process contribute to the “leaks”? The topic of disclosing (or not) disabilities to employers has even been recently featured in the New York Times, and I have just now picked up a fascinating book of collected essays about disclosing disability in higher education. With this backdrop, it is clear that deciding what to tell and when is not a decision to be taken lightly.

With these concerns in mind, in summer 2019 The Mind Hears solicited responses to a very short survey about when folks chose to reveal their deafness. The 25 survey responders spanned people in a range of positions and career stages, with at least two actively on the
market, and the rest ranging from postdocs to lecturers, faculty on and off tenure tracks, researchers, and at least one retired professor. The survey showed that preferred communication methods varied widely, with a great majority of respondents reporting that they rely primarily on speech reading and hearing aids, but a little over 40% use sign language (Fig. 1).

While the number of responses prevents an comprehensive treatise on how deaf/HoH academics approach the job search process, this survey does provide a series of snapshots of choices that have been made—and why they have been made. Many personal factors can play a role in these decisions—such as upbringing, prior positive or negative experiences in disclosing hearing loss, primary mode of communication, career stage, and the type of institution applying to. Cultural shifts in social climate may also influence whether a strategy may be more appealing today than it was 20 years ago. Regardless of the limitations of the survey, as you sift through these snapshots of experiences, you may find something that resonates with your history or that gives you an idea of how to move forward in your own job search.

The first question we asked was: At what point in your job application for a professional position have you chosen to reveal your deafness? Among our respondents, the most common choice was “upon being invited to the interview,” followed by two polar opposites: “never” or “in the application materials”(Fig. 2). Various minor choices involved situational circumstances, the fact that application materials strongly suggested (but did not overtly reveal) deafness, or revealing only once the job offer was accepted.

What prompted people to make their choice? Those who never revealed their deafness or revealed it late in the process (during the interview or upon acceptance) expressed strong concerns about bias. Here is a sample of replies:

“ I have been rejected before the interview which I assume is because of my disclosure of being deaf.”

 “Not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to give them the opportunity to [discriminate], thinking that I could get by without them knowing anyway.”

“worried about discrimination and also feel[ing] that it doesn’t affect my ability to do job so it isn’t any of their business.”

For those who revealed their deafness upon being invited to interview, the overriding concern was that their application would be evaluated without prejudice, but that performance during the interview would not be misinterpreted:

“I want to be upfront about the reason why I may asking ‘what’ more often than the hearing person so it doesn’t reflect poorly on me. It’s not that I’m not listening, it’s just that I physically couldn’t hear you.”

 “You need to make sure you are able to hear in the interview, and prepare the interviewers for any gaps in understanding that occur as a result of your not hearing them well.”

 “I want my resume to be read without any bias. If my resume gets selected for interview, it is based on my merits. So, at that time I let the interviewer know about my deafness to get necessary accommodations for a smooth conversation. However, I understand that even at that stage the bias can creep in.”

 “I like to be upfront and let the interviewer know that I will be using VRS [Video Relay Service]—I want a workplace that will be open to my being Deaf so like to bring it up as early as possible in a relatively nonchalant way.”

 “I didn’t want my disability to determine whether or not I would be invited to campus. I didn’t want interviewers to think I was strange if I tried to pass as a hearing person, so I told the committee that invited me for the interview.”

Those who chose to reveal their deafness early on, in the application materials, felt that valuable information about them would be lost without a reveal, or knew practices in their field would require challenging communication situations arising early in the process:

“I had one significant outreach in the Deaf community and wanted institutions to know that would likely be part of my service as a professor.”

 “The job was for a post in a university as a deaf studies and sign language lecturer, so it was advantageous to tell them at that time.”

“Most jobs in my field do first round interviews via Skype or Zoom and I cannot hear the committee members.”

We then asked: What accommodations have you requested during job interviews, and how have these requests been received? In my case, this question brought back painful memories. Because the concept of asking for accommodation was so foreign to me—I had an ingrained belief that my “problem” was mine alone to solve—the only accommodation I requested was that my host repeat all audience questions for me. I still cringe at recalling the most challenging part of my interview days—lunch with the graduate students, generally a large group, with many too shy to speak loudly. I had the terrified feeling that if I as much as glanced down at my pizza slice I was going to miss an incredibly important question from a person across the room whom I could not hear nor speech read. Fortunately, some respondents were much more savvy than I was, though, as you may expect, the answers were as diverse as deaf/HoH individuals can be.

Some folks opted not to request accommodations or to bring their own communication tools or approaches:

“None; I don’t want to doom my chances from the start.”

“None, I bring my own FM system and do my own research about the panel beforehand to see if there may be any additional concerns for speech reading.”

 “I reveal my HoH state right up front as soon as we’re introduced, explain that I might need to ask them to repeat themselves and [if] necessary, ask people to move closer.”

Several job seekers mentioned orchestrating seating arrangements in order to facilitate communication:

“I did not request formal accommodations but did ask for clarification within conversations and chose my seats carefully at meals [so that I could follow conversation].”

“Rearranging a room for my job talk in order to make the seating shallower and to make it more easy for me to walk up to folks during the Q&A.”

“No specific accommodations. I’ve told people I needed to see their face to lipread, and sometime I’ve asked to sit in a different place to help with lipreading. I see this as casually saying I have a hearing impairment, if needed, rather than formally declaring it as a disability.”

 Some job seekers explicitly requested accommodations for the interviews with mixed responses:

 “Used CART or written questions for onsite interviews; Caption phone for phone interviews. 60% of the time, it was not an issue. At other times, people did not understand the accommodation process and tried to speak instead of writing questions, or say like “I don’t know why, but he is using a special phone”, even after having informed about it in advance. At that time, I had to repeat the need for accommodation.”

 “I have used interpreters in interviews and this practice generated all kinds of rude and/or illegal inquiries. I have had an interpreter blocked from parts of the all-day academic dog-and-pony-show interview on the grounds it was the “confidential” part (only to find the other party sitting with his back to the bright window, rocking post-stroke half-face paralysis and a Western movie sheriff moustache).”

“Sign language interpreters, request was very positively received.”

Ultimately, our worry is that conscious or unconscious bias will lead search committees to assume that we are not suitable for the positions. But how to limit the effect of bias when we communicate our needs? We asked respondents how they reassured committees of their job suitability. Some suggested highlighting the unique strengths of being deaf/HoH:

 “I make sure to show the positive aspects as they would relate to the job, ‘I have these sets of skills and they would assist me in this position in the following way.’ These are not just skills that ‘make up for’ my hearing, but skills that I have [that] add an advantage over hearing individuals or individuals that don’t speech read or know sign language. Being multilingual is typically a plus on a search.”

 “My PhD advisor and I talked about how he would describe my deafness within his letter of recommendation. I had some concerns that he would take a ‘pitying’ tone and in our conversation I was able to suggest to him some ways to frame my hearing loss as one of my characteristics rather than as a challenge to be overcome. He seemed to understand so I trusted that his letter would assuage any fears of the committee. My PhD advisor had also been impressed with the significant effort that I had put into disability advocacy during my PhD. I believe that he framed this as my passion for serving the community.”

A few job seekers were confident that the search committee would judge their strong qualification fairly:

“I trust that my CV speaks for itself, as well as outlining my capabilities/communication methods in my covering letter.”

 “My qualifications show suitability in and of itself, confidence is key and knowing exactly what accommodations I need.”

Sadly, also common among survey respondents were concerns that the whole process is unfairly stacked against deaf/HoH applicants, or that the only way to be perceived as competent is to disclose as little as possible:

“My work history speaks for itself. I’ve been teaching for 13 years […]. But since I rarely make it to interview stage, I don’t even get to reassure the committee members of my suitability for the job.”

“After several interviews where both having an interpreter (‘do we have to pay a second person to have you work here??’) and not having an interpreter (‘but her answer to my question was not what I asked. She should have had an interpreter if she could not hear me’) did not work, I made a deal with the devil to get a [cochlear implant] so that I could fake it through the interview as a HoH person, just showing them that I could fit in. I did not draw a great deal of attention to my deafness. I know people on the search committee and the hiring Dean knew that I was deaf and used interpretation in other settings. However, I wasn’t going to bring it up if they didn’t. Surprisingly enough, that actually did work. I kept my head down and did minimal committee service and very non-interactive classroom style teaching until I was tenured before I began [to ask] for interpreting. The more interpreting I have had access to since then, the more effective my overall professional performance has been. It is a shame that businesses only see the cost of it, and not the performance improvement.”

Because the role of search committees is essentially to eliminate applicants, the job application process is a loaded situation for all, deaf/HoH or not. And it tends to be pretty easy for search committees to come up with reasons not to hire somebody, regardless of any anti-bias regulations put in place. As a result, it is also nearly impossible to prove that a hiring committee has discriminated based on an applicant being deaf/HoH. However, the fact that communication is such a critical and continuous component of academic jobs greatly increases the possibility that our deafness will be erroneously perceived to compromise our likelihood of academic success — before we even get a chance to prove prejudices wrong. There is no easy fix for this; the only one I can think of is to normalize the presence of deaf/HoH academics to the extent that any request for accommodation is seen as routine. Those of us who already hold positions have a role to play here, perhaps in being more forward about requesting accommodations, and in making sure that our deafness is recognized by colleagues and administrators. We should also make sure that diversity initiatives in academia explicitly incorporate disability as an important facet of diversity.

We are very grateful to all people who responded to the survey and were willing to share their experiences with us. Thank you for taking the time to share your stories. Such sharing can only help all of us, and we hope others will feel inspired to keep on paying it forward in the comments below.

The sound we can see: working with hearing loss in the field

daily grind, grad school, networking, profiles, , ,

When I was 19 I went for a checkup with an audiologist and found out that I was hearing only 90% of what I should be. The doctor said that for my age, this was a high level of hearing loss, and attributed it possibly to the intense course of antibiotics I took for kidney failure when I was one year old. He suggested that I come back yearly to repeat the hearing exam, to verify if my ability further decreased below my current hearing levels. Of course I ignored this advice and never went back. When I started my graduate studies six years later, I decided it was finally time to visit the audiologist again, because I discovered that I could not hear the species of frog I had decided to base my research on. This was a very scary moment for me. How did I find myself in this situation?

In the last year of my undergraduate studies I took an ecology course and fell in love with the topic. I knew I wanted to earn a master’s degree in ecology, ideally working with animal populations. In Brazil, one has to take a standardized exam to enter a graduate program. I traveled 440 km to take the test and passed; I began my studies in the Federal University of Paraná located in Curitiba, in the south of Brazil. Among all the available mentors, there was one who carried out research on ecological dynamics of insects and anuran amphibians. I chose his lab and wrote a project proposal examining the population dynamics of an endemic species of stream frog (Hylodes heyeri) in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, specifically Pico do Marumbi State Park, Piraquara, in the state of Paraná. Much of what I was to be doing was completely new to me: I had never worked with frogs and I also had never practiced the mark-and-recapture method. I thus faced a steep learning curve and had to learn a LOT about lab and fieldwork from my team and my mentor. In my first field outing, during which I was to learn how to identify and capture the species I would study, I discovered that I could not hear the frog. A labmate who accompanied me to the field said, “Are you listening? The frog is so close to us.” He thought I was not hearing the frog due to lack of experience, or because of the background noise of the stream. I worried that something else was amiss, and this finally prompted me to go back to my audiologist. There, I discovered that I had lost 2% more of my hearing, and this loss compromised treble sounds, those in the range of high to very high frequencies, precisely overlapping my frog’s vocalizations.

Now, I’m a PhD student and I use hearing aids programmed specifically for my hearing loss, which primarily encompasses frequencies above 4000 Hz. I was initially ashamed to wear hearing aids because people mocked them. But I didn’t consider changing projects, because I knew I could get help localizing the frog. I also knew there would be ways for me to analyze the sound without necessarily hearing it. Even with hearing aids, however, I can only hear the call of my frog when I am no more than 4 meters away. Other members of my lab can detect the sound of the frog from much farther away, even when they are 20 meters or more from the stream. This means that for every survey I carry out in the field, I need a person to accompany me to guide me to the frog, using their sense of hearing to identify the sound. But the assistance I receive in the field goes beyond locating my frog; the field can be dangerous for many reasons: I may not hear dangerous animals—such as puma, collared peccary, or leopards—approaching; and I may lose track of my team if people call me from too far away. Even for scientists without hearing loss, it is advisable not to carry out fieldwork alone.

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to learn Brazilian sign language (LIBRAS) in graduate courses. I am happy that it is a requirement for my degree! When I am in the field I communicate primarily with gestures. I am lucky that my frogs are diurnal, because I am able to see my companions in the field, making communication much easier. Once my companion hears the frog, they look at me so I can read their lips or we make gestures so as to not scare the frogs. Sometimes I use headphones, point the microphone of my recorder in the general direction of the frog, and increase the volume to better understand where the sound comes from—this trick of using my main research tool (my recorder) to find my frogs was taught to me by a friend who also carried out research in bioacoustics and had the challenge of finding a tiny mountain frog species that hid in leaf-litter (thank you, André Confetti). My frogs are also tiny, only 4 cm long. They camouflage in the streams and spook very easily, but in order to obtain my data, I need to get as close as 50 cm from the frog. Only then can I really start. The aim of my work is to analyze the effect of anthropogenic noise (such as traffic road sounds transmitted by playback) on frog communication. Once I am in position, I can play the anthropogenic sound, and record the frog’s call. I take these recordings back to the lab and experience the most rewarding aspect of my efforts to find these frogs. The recordings are transformed into graphs of the frequency and length of each call. Although I cannot hear the sounds my frog makes, I can see them! After seeing the sound I can analyze several call variables and calculate various statistics.

Would I recommend field work such as mine to somebody who finds themselves in my predicament? If you are open to creative workarounds, such fieldwork is possible for all. Having a field companion, using signs to communicate, and making use of the amplification provided by my recording equipment has solved the majority of my problems. Most important of all, having support from your mentor and other people who can help and you can trust is crucial. I do not intend to continue with bioacoustics research after I graduate, but if I need to mentor any students in the area, I’ll be happy to do it. I worry about my hearing loss too, in thinking of how it will affect my teaching in the future, because sometimes I hear words incorrectly and confuse their meaning. But I recently exposed my hearing loss in an interview; reading more at The Mind Hears and on other blogs has inspired me to worry less about my hearing loss and to continue to forge ahead in my career.

 

Biography: My name is Michelle Micarelli Struett and I am a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Ecology and Conservation (where I also received my MS) at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. My undergraduate was at Maringá State University in Maringá, which is also in Paraná. I am interested in animal behavior, especially in frogs, and in my research will examine multi-modal communication in the Brazilian Torrent Frog (Hylodes heyeri). This unique frog can sing from one or both sides of its mouth (it has two vocal sacs), depending on context. I will attempt to determine what that context is that stimulates those two possibilities (auditive, visual, or tactile), and how anthropogenic noise may interfere with communication and social interactions in this frog. Despite my hearing loss (which primarily encompasses frequencies above 4000 Hz), I have not been constrained from working with frog calls and bioacoustics.

Mandated equal opportunity hiring may not ensure equal considerations by hiring committees: A hypothetical scenario

daily grind, job searches, networking, teaching,

-Ryan

Imagine that you are a deaf/hard-of-hearing (HoH) person applying for a full-time academic position in a U.S. public institution of higher learning. The position is listed nationally across multiple job boards. At the offering institution, deaf/HoH faculty, students, administrators, and staff members represent 1% of the population. You are highly qualified and display an extensive résumé with many accomplishments in your field and a strong history of service. Information about you is highly transparent on the internet at large.

You investigate and discover that the offering department does not currently have a deaf or hard-of-hearing person among their full-time and adjunct faculty.

Applying for the position:

When applying, you check the general “YES, I have a disability” box on the institution’s application and contact the human resources (HR) department directly to let them know that you are applying specifically as a deaf/HoH person. If you are offered an interview for the position, you request, as is your right, to meet with the search committee in person, rather than have the interview over a conference call. You cross your fingers, hoping that the HR department communicates with the department offering the position to ensure that they are presenting an equal opportunity for employment for those with disabilities. Does the HR department actually communicate your request for accommodation to the academic department? You may never know but let’s say that it does in this case…

Considerations of the hiring committee:

When the academic department’s search committee learns that you are deaf/HoH how will they respond? Are they experienced in the process of interviewing a deaf or hard-of-hearing person? How many interviews have they given to deaf/HoH applicants in the past? How many of those previous applicants were given an interview, made it to the second or third round of the process, and hired full-time? Where are the statistics to prove that equal opportunities are being given?

When the search committee learns of your request to meet in person for an interview because you are deaf/HoH, how aware and educated are the search committee members of Deaf culture and what it means to be deaf or hard of hearing? How aware are they of what it means to be a deaf/HoH faculty member teaching in a mainly all-hearing environment? Do they know the benefits of having a deaf or hard-of-hearing person as a part of their full-time or part-time faculty? What evidence is there within the department’s current publications, seminars, exhibitions, faculty development, and outreach efforts of awareness of the advantages brought about by workplace diversity that is inclusive of disability?

Is the typical academic faculty search committee equipped, skilled, and supportive enough to interview a deaf/HoH candidate if none of their members are deaf or hard of hearing? If they don’t have deaf/HoH members, are they sufficiently trained in deaf/HoH experiences to judge your application fairly against the numerous other applicants who do not have any disabilities? Are search committees trained enough to distinguish between medical and cultural models of disability, and to understand how these models impact their perceptions of your strengths? Are they savvy enough to move away from focusing on what the you can’t do, and focus instead on what your diverse perspective brings to the hiring unit?

Answers to many of the questions I ask above should be part of the public record. My experience in the job search circuit thus far has left me disillusioned and believing that departmental search committees and HR departments are likely ill-equipped to handle deaf/HoH applicants. Studies have shown that search committees have many implicit biases. One of these biases is that since deafness may impede academic success, it is safer to hire a hearing applicant.

It’s time to fix this.

Have you ever been a on a faculty search committee where a deaf or hard-of-hearing person applied? If so, did that person receive the position? If not, would you like to share your experience?

Who am I at a Research Conference: the Deaf Person or the Scientist?

conferences, networking, , ,

– Caroline

I look forward to and dread research conferences simultaneously.

I look forward to seeing my friends and colleagues, learning about new research, and exercising my neurons as I ponder different research topics and directions. I eagerly anticipate exploring the different cities and countries where the conferences are held. I long for those few days where I control my own schedule.

At the same time, I dread discovering that the provided access services are inadequate to catch the various research presentations and posters—the interpreting and/or captioning quality ranges from poor to excellent, so the significance of getting the gist of what is new research is >0.05 (I know I shouldn’t be using 0.05 as a baseline, my dear statistician friends). I also worry whether the quality of my research work is reflected accurately by the interpreters for my presentations.

But what I dread the most is being viewed as the deafperson, not as a scientist. At the first few conferences I attended, people would come up to me and ask questions such as, “How do you come up with signs for phytoplankton or photorespiration?” Often, they would try to strike up a conversation with the interpreter right in front of me and commiserate about how hard it must be to keep up with the scientific jargon, especially with people speaking at warp speeds. These conversations were always awkward since the interpreters know they cannot have personal conversations while they are interpreting. They would look to me for guidance on how to handle the situations, since they knew the protocol, even if my colleagues did not.

solomon mid post

I’ve mastered responding with a strained smile on my face, “Yes, it isn’t easy. By the way, what is yourresearch on? And do you have a poster or talk here?” Most people get the hint and are more than happy to talk about their own research. After twenty years in the field, these encounters become less frequent, but they still occur.

Those encounters have become rarer over time because I have become more assertive about going up to other researchers to ask them about their work; but that assertiveness and confidence has come in part because of my growing scientific reputation in the field of estuarine science and oceanography. Now, I suspect that if I stand around and wait for people to come talk to me, they either won’t come due to fear, or they will come with the dreadedquestions. I truly appreciate my colleagues who come to me to discuss science.

At academic conferences, I am a scientist first, and deaf person second.

Caroline_SolomonDr. Solomon has been a faculty member at Gallaudet since 2000.  She also is an adjunct at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and serves on masters and doctoral committees for research on increasing participation of deaf and hard of hearing people in STEM and estuarine science especially in the areas of nutrient and microbial dynamics.

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding unfamiliar accents

conferences, meetings, networking, , , ,

-Ana

I wrote this post on an airplane coming back from an international conference I attended in Thailand. Because of the distance involved, participation at this meeting was pretty light on scientists from North and South America, but had a lot of participants from Europe (primarily the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Belgium) and Asia (primarily Thailand, China, Japan, Taiwan, but several other countries too). It was a wonderful conference: great venue, warm hosts, cutting-edge talks, great food, new people to meet, and some fun sightseeing thrown in. It also brought with it the usual challenges of trying to understand talks and poster presentations and network with important scientists in noisy settings. But this conference also brought home a specific problem that has stymied me throughout my career: understanding unfamiliar accents.

Deaf/HoH academics who depend on oral communication will likely be familiar with the problem that, even in an optimal hearing environment, we better understand those who speak like we do. Unfamiliar or “foreign” is relative, of course. I speak English and Spanish, but, due to the particularities of my upbringing, my best shot at hearing/understanding Spanish is with people who speak Colombian Spanish, or even more, the version of Colombian Spanish spoken in and around Bogotá (indeed, that is the accent I speak with – immediately recognizable to most Latin Americans). My Argentinean and Mexican friends can attest to how obnoxious I can be asking them to repeat themselves. Likewise, for English, I fare best with a northern Midwestern US type of English; Australian, British, Indian and many other accents will leave me floundering. I imagine that the same is true for other deaf/HoH academics, but with different versions of their language they are most used to.

Scholarly research, of course, is a global venture, and it is wonderful that many luminaries in my field hail from around the world. I’m already incredibly lucky that most professional communication is conducted in English, a language I happen to know. But, while hearing people can be quite understanding of my communication difficulties in suboptimal environments, it seems cruel (and professionally unwise) to tell colleagues that I can’t ‘hear’ them because of their accents—especially because many such colleagues have worked hard to acquire their English skills, thus going the extra mile to ensure communication. Because of globalism, the problem with understanding unfamiliar accents goes beyond conferences and professional networking. Many of my undergraduate and graduate students are also from various international locations. I am heartbroken every time I feel that my difficulty understanding my students negatively affects my ability to mentor them.

I have not found ideal strategies to deal with the challenges of unfamiliar accents. Every accent becomes a little more familiar with constant exposure, so I do understand my graduate students (with whom I communicate almost daily) better as time goes by. But it never stops being a challenge, and I sometimes have to resort to written communication in our one-on-one meetings. Since the undergraduates I teach change each semester, I don’t have similar opportunities to become familiar with their accents. For conferences and professional networking, I imagine that real-time captioning would be the ideal solution; but such a resource is not available at all conferences (though it should be!) and is generally not an option for networking. I’ve been excited by the recent advances in speech recognition software, such as that demonstrated by Google Slides, and wonder both if the technology can accommodate a range of accents and, if so, if it could ever become a portable “translator” for deaf/HoH individuals (I know some portable translator apps exist, but haven’t tried them and don’t know the scope of their utility; perhaps some readers can share their experiences?). I’m also curious whether unfamiliar accents are ever a challenge for deaf/HoH academics who rely on sign language interpreters. What other strategies have deaf/HoH academics employed to help navigate the challenge of unfamiliar accents in a professional setting?