The National Technical Institute for the Deaf is one of eight colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. The NTID was created by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965 to provide technical postsecondary education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Prior to NTID, there were very few options for such students to pursue technical degrees and obtain jobs in those career fields.
The Veterans Administration reports hearing loss as a top disability for members of the military who return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to loud gunfire and explosions. Veterans who are transitioning into civilian life may want to pursue career training or continue their education.
Recently-discharged veterans who are hard-of-hearing won’t know sign language when entering the classroom. NTID offers classroom captioning, and their system is called C-Print. Someone who has hearing loss needs to focus with their eyes on what is being said (by either reading lips, or reading captions), and if they move their eyes away to take notes they can miss parts. NTID has note takers available for hearing-impaired students to make their learning experience easier. NTID also has a hearing aid shop, audiologists, and counselors to provide support to students.
Rochester Institute of Technology is a Yellow Ribbon College. This means that the college supports veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, and they are able to receive additional financial assistance for tuition, as well as existing veterans’ benefits for housing and textbooks. The amount of assistance will depend on the veterans’ length of service, but eligible veterans applying to RIT would have most of their tuition provided by the Veteran’s Administration, RIT, and the state. Private Yellow Ribbon colleges such as RIT agree to provide allowances for up to half of that difference between their tuition and the public tuition limit, with the VA paying the other half of the difference.
RIT has approximately 300 veteran students, and three ROTC programs (Army, Air Force, NAVY/Marines). There are paid co-ops that are required for many of the 200 degree programs that are available to veterans as well.
Information provided by Greg Livadas, Director of Media Relations for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, at Rochester Institute of Technology.
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Learn more about Veterans with Hearing Loss:
A Message from Allen Ford, Project Coordinator from RIT/NTID .
