Welcome to the August 11, 2023 issue of Hi5! The campus is starting to come alive, with JumpStart and fall sports training camps underway. Our faculty returns next week, and new students arrive the following week! Fall semester classes begin on Monday, August 28.

Be sure to mark your calendar now for Thursday, August 31. President Cordano will give her annual Welcome Home address, and we will have our popular Bison Fest that afternoon!

Here are our Top Five stories.

1
Twenty-four Black Deaf students and their descendants received high school diplomas conferred by the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center on July 22. Their four Black teachers were also honored. The ceremony was held at the Kellogg Conference Hotel, which sits on the site of Kendall School Division II. It was very emotional and moving. National and local media covered the event; you can find links to their stories on our website.

2
The Gallaudet University Board of Trustees has three new members: Edna Conway, Dr. Leah K. Cox, and Melissa Draganac-Hawk. Ms. Conway is an information security expert. Dr. Cox is Vice Provost for Equity, Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a former Gallaudet employee. Ms. Draganac-Hawk is a Gallaudet alumna who is Head of School at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. We welcome all three to our Board and our community!

3
Dr. Jeremy L. Brunson has been named Interim Chief Diversity Officer. He replaces Dr. Elizabeth A. Moore, who is retiring after 27 years of service to the university as a faculty member and administrator. Welcome, Dr. Brunson, and best wishes on your retirement, Dr. Moore!

4
Gallaudet University and National University Corporation Tsukuba University of Technology (NTUT) in Tsukuba, Japan, have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU. This MOU will promote and develop activities between the two universities that focus on Virtual Exchange-Collaborative Online International Learning (VE-COIL). Two Gallaudet faculty members, Dr. Genie Gertz and Dr. Franklin Torres, will coordinate VE-COIL course development.

5
Congratulations to alumnus Bader Alomary, from Saudi Arabia, who received the prestigious King Khalid Award last month from King Salman bin Abdulaziz. Alomary’s pioneering project, the “Indicative Dictionary,” won first place in the King Khalid Award’s Development Partners Branch. This dictionary notes the variations in sign language across different regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

We have many other stories in Hi5 and on our website. Our students, staff, faculty, and alumni are doing great things! We have had several students from Gallaudet and other schools on campus this summer to learn about the scientific research process. Our undergraduate and graduate students are doing internships all over the U.S. and the world. There is a great new interactive exhibit on American Sign Language at Planet Word, a museum in downtown Washington, D.C., the result of a National Science Foundation grant to Dr. Deanne Gagne of our Linguistics program. And Motion Light Lab creative designer Yiqiao Wang designed three new Starbucks mugs that are on sale nationwide.

Hi5 comes out once per month during the summer, and biweekly during the academic year. The next issue of Hi5 will be on Friday, September 8. In the meantime, stay up to date by following us at @GallaudetU on our social media platforms. We have added Threads as our newest social media platform. If you have a story that you feel would be a good fit for Hi5 or social media, share it with us at gu.live/request. 
 
Have a great month. We will see you again in September!