Congratulations to Gallaudet faculty receiving tenure

Read these profiles to learn about their innovative research and years of service to Gallaudet.

Pamela Collins, '07, G-'11, & PhD '20

Interpretation and Translation

Dr. Collins became part of the Gallaudet community in 2003 as a Hearing Undergraduate (HUG). She believes immersion in American Sign Language (ASL) and working with deaf communities has greatly influenced her teaching approach. Collins fondly recalls her early connections with Deaf church members in Atlanta and remembers when Deaf people vetted potential interpreters and encouraged them to get professionally trained.

Today, individuals may choose to pursue interpretation with or without the support of the Deaf community, which necessitates updated approaches to teaching. Collins attained national certification in the early 2000s and started working at Gallaudet Interpreting Service (GIS) in 2009. Her academic journey began in 2003 and ended with acquiring a BA, MA, and PhD from Gallaudet University. Starting as a student, Collins transitioned to staff and later became a faculty member in the Interpretation program in 2017.

Collins is passionate about equipping students with the skills to navigate communities, cultures, and languages. She often emphasizes the importance of moving beyond the boundaries and into the experiences of everyday people. While entry into the interpreting field may look different today, she believes in creating spaces for growth and equipping students with the tools to navigate new spaces and acquire new knowledge.

Collins particularly enjoys teaching courses such as History of Interpreting, Field Experience, and Professional Practice. Her research focuses on access, service provision, the impact of scheduling ASL-English interpreters, the social organization of interpreters regarding race, and the educational experiences of minority students in interpreter education programs. She believes the best outcomes are achieved when faculty, students, and community partners collaborate.

Collins has co-founded the Shirley Childress Fund, the Translation Lab, and Interpreting Students of Color. She recently co-authored a chapter titled "Village Work: The Trubiz Mentor Model" in Interpreting the Body Politic: African American/Black Interpreters' Positionality Contribution. Her next project involves publishing her dissertation, "Sign Language Interpreting: Service Provision as an Institution."

Campbell McDermid, Ph.D., G-'88

Interpretation and Translation

For Dr. McDermid, who joined Gallaudet as an Associate Professor in Interpretation and Translation in August 2020, one of the most rewarding classes to teach is a foundational course. He especially loves seeing students shift from literal translation to nuanced understandings of meaning. "The moment when their eyes light up upon realizing the depth and complexity of effective translation is truly inspiring. It's a joy to guide them through this transformative learning process," he says.

His research includes translation theory, identity, Groupthink, pragmatics, cohesion, accuracy and assessment. One of his main projects is funded by the Department of Education's Rehabilitation Services Administration, aiming to train interpreters for medical appointments. "This is a critical area where effective communication can have life-altering consequences," notes McDermid, who has found it deeply rewarding to collaborate with Elizabeth Schniedewind at Idaho State University on this project.

McDermid is proud of this and other collaborative research projects involving a diverse mix of Deaf and hearing graduate and undergraduate students. His most recent publications include "Evidence of explicitation: Working from ASL into English," "Resiliency: Experiences of African American/Black sign language interpreters," and "Gendered translations: Working from ASL into English."

Now McDermid is working on integrating AI into his teaching. Equipping students with AI tools helps them better understand their translation quality and provides immediate, actionable feedback on their word choices and grammar. "The potential of AI to revolutionize the way we teach and learn in the field of interpretation and translation is immense, and I am excited to be at the forefront of this exploration," he says.

James McCann, Ph.D., G-'01

Speech-Language Pathology

Dr. McCann joined Speech-Language Pathology in the Fall of 2018. His teaching and research focuses on language acquisition in DHH children, particularly children who struggle to acquire signed language. Having presented widely to professionals and parents, he looks at assessment strategies and evidence-based practice.

McCann teaches a variety of topics including child language development and disorders, working with DHH children and adults, clinical procedures and statistics, and clinical applications of signed language. When asked about some of his favorite classes, McCann says he loves to teach about language development and disorders, especially in birth-5 and school-age children. He developed an elective called "Sign Language Development and Differences."

He also serves as the Program Director of the Master's in Speech-Language Pathology program, and mentors research projects for SLP, AuD, and PhD students, many of whom have disseminated their work through publications or conferences.

McCann is now continuing a longitudinal study looking at DHH children's early language acquisition in signed and/or spoken language. The plan is to collect data every six months for 2 years and he's excited to start the next round of this work. On top of this, Dr. McCann serves as the Speech-Language Services Strategist for Gallaudet's National Beacon Center. In this role, he provides direct consultation on developing materials, training, and technical assistance for providing speech and language services in the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention field.

Yoojung Rhee, Ph.D.

Physical Education and Recreation

Dr. Rhee is in the fortunate position to regularly enable students to de-stress on a regular basis. She teaches Yoga, allowing students to relax their bodies and release their minds from their busy schedules. She says she loves helping students to find ways of managing their stress through yoga practice.

Rhee joined GU as faculty in PER in the Fall of 2018. Her research interests range from sports management and sports law, to physical and mental risk management in sports and other physical activities. She is particularly involved in psychological support for retired athletes.

Her favorite class to teach is Management in Physical Education, Recreation, and Sports Programs. Her students bring diverse perspectives and experiences around sport and physical activities, and she enjoys her role "to help students understand a mechanism of business and management in sport and how they can utilize the aspects of management and business in sport careers for their future." On the horizon for this fall, Rhee has several ideas for new research and is especially excited about a project around athletes' legal rights in sports organizations.

Rhee appreciates her Gallaudet home, saying "I truly feel grateful to support students, and to work with fabulous colleagues and faculty members at Gallaudet University. I am proud that I am part of the GU community."

Hayley Stokar, Ph.D., G-'08

Social Work

Dr. Stokar joined GU as faculty in Aug 2020 and currently serves as the BSW Program Director. As a licensed social worker, she has 16 years social work experience in case management, counseling, program development, vocational rehabilitation, and clinical supervision of social work students.

Her published and ongoing research centers on discrimination and employment barriers for d/Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard-of-hearing populations, stigma and disability, social policy, and career preparedness among college students. She has a strong collaboration with Dr. Kota Takayma around disaster preparedness for Deaf people. As a faculty member at Gallaudet, Stokar has taught nine different courses across the BSW curriculum and is the lead author of the program's reaccreditation self-study through the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). She is dedicated to service in program, university, and faculty governance contexts as well as in the wider community.

Cara Miller, G-'10 & PhD '11

Psychology

Before Dr. Miller became a full-time faculty member in 2018, she served as the LGBTQA Resource Center Coordinator in the then Office of Diversity and Equity for Students (now Equity, Diversity, and Inclusive Excellence), and University-wide disability accommodations involving assistance animals from 2017-2020. She says, "It's a privilege to teach, learn, grow with, and accompany our students in their journeys, and a great gift to get to do so along with supportive and respected colleagues."

Miller's interests include trauma and somatic therapy; grief and loss; and human-animal interaction, with a focus on disability and service dog partnerships. "It's been my experience that these areas converge in the space of deeply formative and transformative life experiences, even transcending language while bringing us into contact with the deepest parts of ourselves." Toward that end, Miller has served on the HAI (human-animal interaction) Board in the Counseling Psychology division of the American Psychological Association, provided behavioral health consultation for service dog organizations serving veterans with post-traumatic stress, and published on disabled partners' grief and bereavement following the loss of a service dog.

Asked about her favorite courses to teach, she points to Trauma-Informed Interventions in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program. Here, students increase their understanding of traumatic stress, build skills in applying theory and research to care, and deepen their experience of trauma-informed care as taught through trauma-informed pedagogy. Miller describes her 2020 experience of developing and teaching a course on the Psychology of Human-Animal Interaction for undergraduate Psychology students as a "great privilege (and fun!)"

On the horizon is an initiative on Somatic Experiencing (SE), a biophysiological model for nervous system regulation and traumatic stress resolution in mental, behavioral, and healthcare settings. Currently a training assistant for SE cohorts nationally, Miller says she "is particularly interested in the applications of SE with DHH people, (our) communities and families, and the practitioners working with them. I also definitely infuse what I've learned from the training and SE model into my work in the classroom as a faculty member with deep care for trauma-informed pedagogy." Expanding on these efforts, she is also working on a multi-year effort to bring the Somatic Experiencing Professional Training to DHH and hearing signing professionals working with Deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened, DeafBlind, and Deaf-Disabled people and communities.

Deanna Gagne, Ph.D.

Linguistics

Dr. Gagne joined as faculty in 2018. One of her favorite classes to teach is a new one she developed for the Linguistics Program (Languages on a Small Scale: Emergence, Ecology, and Evolution) in which students have to consider a wide range of topics on both macro and micro levels.

Gagne draws heavily on her trilingual upbringing in ASL, English, and Spanish as a hearing CODA and a first-generation American on her mother's side. Her research interests range from developmental psychology, studying how children acquire and shape language, to CODAs and other bimodal bilinguals who speak and sign, as well as deaf individuals who learn to sign as older teens.

Gagne's current research, funded by a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, is bringing Protactile to DeafBlind children ages 0-5. The 30 kids involved in this study are being tutored by DeafBlind adults, and supported by teachers and parents with access to newly created Protactile educational materials. "Can a tactile language be a child's first language? Everyone's intuition is it can be done," Gagne says. "But if yes, what does it look like? And how does the language change, even among adults?"

It's a new frontier not just for science, but also for a population often deprived of communication. "If we give this language to kids, it will be completely different in 10 years," Gagne predicts. "I'm excited to continue my work with the DeafBlind community, supporting parents of DeafBlind kids as they learn protactile." Deanna describes this research and another recent project involving museum accessibility here.