她的巅峰

Just two weeks after Roberta “Bobbi” Cordano’86 took office as president of Washington, D.C.今年1月，他将在美国加劳德特大学(Gallaudet University)就读, she experienced what could only be described as a trial by snowstorm.

“Snowzilla” was one of the region’s worst winter storms on record, 在D部分地区降雪量达3英尺.C. metro region during the span of one weekend and leaving much of the city socked in. 那些依赖火车和公共汽车的人发现自己被困住了, 还有一些社区, 以及加劳德特大学校园里的一些建筑, 失去权力.

这不是Cordano第一次面对挑战, who became president of the renowned school for deaf and hard of hearing students on January 1, 在她长达数十年的法律生涯中需要克服的困难, 教育, 公共服务. 天生耳聋, she had resolved to become a lawyer at the age of 13 after her sister experienced discrimination due to her perceived disability. Both of Cordano’s parents are deaf, as well as one of her two sisters.

加劳德特一直是科尔达诺的血液. 她的父母都是校友, and they instilled a loyalty and reverence for the school in her from a young age. 当科尔达诺在20世纪80年代初申请大学时, 然而, 大多数法学院不欢迎聋人学生, 包括加劳德特大学的毕业生. 她的父母, fearing that she wouldn’t be able to achieve her goals if she attended their alma mater, 鼓励她去其他地方申请.

“他们说, “如果你真的想当律师的话, 你想要战胜困难, you’re going to have to be able to bear with the fact that you have to go to a hearing college,’”她回忆道. “他们让我选一所文理学院, 类似于加劳德特大学, 这是很小的, 我能在哪里成功.她决定去伯洛伊特大学，主修社会学. She went on to law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

回到暴风雪的话题上来. 科达诺，前助理司法部长
the State of Minnesota who previously worked at a health and human services nonprofit in St. Paul, scrambled to come up with solutions for problems outside her realm of professional experience. 与校园工作人员和管理人员合作, she figured out how to feed hungry students when the cafeteria 失去权力 and deputize staff to remove piles of snow from the sidewalks so that students weren’t trapped in their residence halls.

一度, Cordano opened up her on-campus home to the families of young students at the university’s elementary and secondary schools.

“We have 17 families that live here with their children that are from a very young age up until much older children,她解释道. “气温上升了。
dropped from 67 degrees to 47 degrees in the places [where they were living] because we lost heat.” Cordano estimates that at one point there were almost 50 people in her house. She had enough stockpiled food to feed them all because she and her spouse, 玛丽, 有两个十几岁的儿子.

回想三个月后的暴风雪, Cordano says that it gave her the perfect opportunity to bond with students, 以及支持他们的领导. 她解释说，在她上任之前, students made it clear that they wanted all of her campus communications to be released in both written form and visually via vlogs (video blogs) in American Sign Language, 反映了加劳德特大学作为双语大学的地位. 在暴风雪期间, the campus’s crisis leadership team wrote an email to students about what they needed to do, prompting a response from student body government leaders asking where the president’s vlog was.

" 24小时内, students produced a signing vlog for the whole community based on what was written in that email,她说。, noting that it typically takes professional videographers on Gallaudet’s staff two to three days to produce a video. Cordano和学生们合作编写了一个剧本, and they filmed Cordano relaying the messages about campus safety in ASL. “They set up a new gold standard for providing access and making sure that we have bilingual communications,她谈到学生时说.

Cordano’s presidency comes during a decades-long controversy involving Gallaudet’s leadership following student protests in 1988 known as the “Deaf President Now” movement. 这些努力促成了我的任命. King Jordan, the first deaf president in the school’s 152-year-history. Student activism was sparked again in 2006 when the board of trustees appointed a woman president who was deaf, 但母语不是美国手语的人. The board ultimately terminated her presidency before she took office after a vote of no confidence from the faculty.

Cordano is now the fourth deaf president to hold office, and the first deaf woman to do so.

她自己的本科经历, Cordano says that the community of friends she found at 贝洛伊特 played a huge role in helping her to succeed academically. 作为大四学生, 她把珍妮弗·尼尔森带走了, a deaf first-year student from Madison who didn’t speak sign language, 在她的羽翼下.

“Bobbi and her mother and sister encouraged me to go to Gallaudet, 至少暂时是这样, 让自己沉浸其中，找回我的传统,尼尔森说. She transferred from 贝洛伊特 to Gallaudet for her sopho更多的 year and learned to sign, ultimately claiming a diving scholarship at George Washington University and finishing up her undergraduate studies there. 如今，她是加劳德特大学的一名英语教授. “我认为 President Cordano has brought a much-needed boost in morale to our university,” she adds.

最重要的是, Cordano is grateful to be leading a school that she has always felt was calling to her.

这是一句古老的格言, 我认为, 这也适用于那些得到了很多的人, 期望很高, 我这辈子有过那么多的机会.”

波比Cordano 86

凯瑟琳·弗林(Katherine Flynn) 11岁，来自华盛顿特区.C.-based freelance writer and assistant editor for the award-winning Preservation Magazine.