Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.
Michael Porter
I had an active professional life in my early years at Fresno State. In addition to publishing The Silent Garden, I wrote a play that won a Ford Foundation playwright award and was performed at College of the Sequoias. During my second year at the university, I also decided to use an interpreter in the classroom and in some meetings. Some of the faculty had seemed against the idea my first year, believing I should use my own voice. But I found that I sometimes missed things in meetings and group discussions. Karen Jensen and Bette J. Baldis, the other Deaf Education faculty, occasionally interpreted for me, but I felt that was a duty that distracted them from concentrating on their own work. As a result of having my own interpreter, I was better able to contribute in discussions and on committees.
In 1985, I applied for academic tenure, which would provide me with a permanent position on the faculty. My friends on the staff said that with my book and other accomplishments, I was a shoo-in to be approved. I too was confident about my application.
The first hurdle in the process was the department committee. Unfortunately, two of my advocates on the committee missed the meeting when my request was addressed. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the chair of the committee was the same professor who opposed my views on sign language. Soon after they met, I received a letter with shocking news—my request for tenure had been denied.
To have my own department reject my application was quite a blow. I was extremely upset. That night I called Dunbar and told him what had happened. As a twenty-year veteran of life among the faculty at a major university, he sympathized with me. The next day, he wrote a fifteen-page letter—single-spaced—filled with insights and wisdom on how to deal with university politics. It included advice on how to work better with people, network, prepare better proposals, and not grow complacent about my progress.
Anne had similar thoughts. As one of the first hard of hearing people to complete a nursing degree, she had plenty of experience with politics herself. Some of Anne’s professors and the medical professionals at her school were skeptical of a hard of hearing person’s ability to succeed as a nurse. They attempted to fail Anne but could not because she passed all her coursework. She told me, “You can learn from this.”
I realized that I had to become more politically savvy. It wasn’t that I had to change my views, but I needed to become more aware of how people responded to me as a deaf person and of how I could most effectively educate and communicate with them. My approach had to be strategic. I also had to learn to not take things personally, which was hard for me. I needed to give others the chance to change their attitude toward me and other deaf people.
I was soon encouraged by a surprising development with my tenure request. The denial letter was passed on to the College of Health and Human Services tenure committee, the next step in the process. This committee had the option of accepting or rejecting the department’s recommendation. Normally, a rejection by the department meant a rejection by the tenure committee, which would officially put an end to my application. But the dean of the college, Richard Ford, happened to see the letter sent to the committee. We had served on committees together and he knew me well. He was surprised by the conclusion of the department committee and called the chair of the committee—I’ll call him Dr. Doane—into his office.
“Can you explain this?” the dean said, pointing to the rejection letter. “I’ve been looking through the paperwork and can’t quite pinpoint what Paul’s weakness is.”
“Well,” Dr. Doane said, “he can’t teach these classes.” He mentioned several courses that were outside of the deaf education course list.
“Yes, that’s true,” the dean said. “But you can’t teach sign language. You can’t teach deaf education. You can’t teach deaf history. Those are all in Paul’s area of expertise. These other classes are not.”
Dr. Doane did not have an explanation. When Dean Ford said that the committee’s finding appeared to be blatant discrimination, Dr. Doane was silent.
The dean overruled the department committee’s rejection. My application was then approved by the college tenure committee, a university committee, the university vice president, and the university president. I’d been granted tenure after all. Like the process of earning my PhD and like so many other challenges in my life, it had not been easy. Yet my efforts had been rewarded. I was at Fresno State to stay.
Two years later, Anne and I grew tired of our long work commutes from our home in the country and decided to move closer to campus. We bought a home with a swimming pool in a residential neighborhood. When a neighbor came over to welcome us and I told her that I worked at Fresno State, she said, “Oh, someone else who works at Fresno State lives next door to you.”
I hoped it wasn’t someone in my department. Our mystery neighbor soon stopped by and revealed his identity. It turned out to be both better and worse than I’d hoped—it was Dean Ford! I had a great relationship with him, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to live next door to my boss.
A few weeks later, Anne and I hosted my sign language class for the weekend. Every year, I invited the class to come over for food, fellowship, games, and now, thanks to our new pool, swimming. It was a “silent retreat”—everyone had to use sign language rather than their voices. It was a great way for them to have fun and bond as a group while also practicing their signing skills.
A couple of days after the retreat, Richard Ford and his wife stopped by with a strawberry pie. The four of us sat down to chat. At one point, Ford said, “I understand you had some people over last weekend. We could hear them laughing, but we couldn’t hear any talking.” The expression on his face was one of concern. I wondered what he thought we’d been doing.
“We weren’t stoned,” I said, which drew a hearty laugh from the Fords. “It was a group of my students. We were practicing sign language.”
The Fords looked relieved. I suspect the dean wondered whether his decision to support my tenure application had been a terrible mistake. I was happy to put his mind at ease. The Fords turned out to be great neighbors, and the four of us got together on many occasions.
Soon after my application for tenure was approved, I began to implement my new, strategic approach to life at Fresno State. Dunbar had advised me to work on faculty committees to bring about change. With that counsel in mind, I volunteered and was appointed to chair the department curriculum committee. It was in many ways a thankless job comprising much reading and filling out of paperwork. No one else wanted the awful task. But the added responsibility put me in a position to better support the deaf education program, including some of my new ideas. I learned, for example, how to navigate the complicated process of changing course names and class sizes. As a result, in 1988 the title of our sign language course changed from Manual Communication to American Sign Language. It also became a required course in our department.
That same year, I encountered another opportunity to establish myself in the department. Without realizing what the other was doing, my two colleagues in the deaf education program had submitted requests to take a yearlong sabbatical to do research. When they found out that they had both made the same plans, neither was willing to withdraw her application. The chair of the personnel committee didn’t want to make a decision that would alienate one or the other. He asked who I would choose. I said I needed time to think about it. I realized this was a chance to prove myself. I wanted to show what I was capable of.
After discussing it with Anne, I gave the personnel committee my recommendation: Let them both take the sabbatical. Hire a full-time person for one year and let me run both the undergraduate and graduate programs. The committee members were taken aback, but they approved my proposal. It meant that I would be mostly unavailable to help Anne at home, even though she was also working full-time. It was going to be a busy year.
Our year became even busier when I received a phone call from Anne’s hospital at the end of September. Anne had injured her knee at work and needed immediate surgery. I had to call her mother and insist that she fly out to help. Anne’s recovery took eight weeks, making for a difficult period in our lives. But at the end of the academic year, as well as after my colleagues had returned from their sabbaticals, more than one faculty member told me that I’d demonstrated my talent as a leader. I had gained more stature and respect in their eyes.
In 1990, I joined the College of Health and Human Services curriculum committee, which had jurisdiction over not just our department but also seven others. I had fixed my sights on a bold goal—to make American Sign Language a General Education course that could fulfill the core language requirement for all university students. No other college in California—and perhaps even the nation—had made ASL part of its General Education curriculum. If my proposal was approved, it would effectively declare ASL a legitimate language.
I first took my idea to our department curriculum committee. I made the point that ASL had already been recognized as an official language by many linguists and educators across the country. But in keeping with my new, strategic approach, I also described a financial benefit. If more students signed up for ASL to fulfill their language requirement, it would mean more funds for our department. Not surprisingly, the committee liked the sound of that. They approved the proposal.
The next step was the General Education curriculum committee. Before the meeting, I sat down with the chair of the committee. Because his father was a pastor who ministered to deaf people, I was sure the chair understood the significance of ASL. He said he would support my proposal, which had me feeling confident going into the meeting. The session did not go as I’d hoped, however. The representative for the linguistics and foreign languages departments felt threatened by my idea. He said that fewer students would take traditional language courses such as Spanish and French. Even worse, the committee chair went back on his word. He said that his father believed ASL was only a refined system of signing, not a true language, and that he wouldn’t support my proposal.
I had been shot down. But I wasn’t giving up. If I had learned anything from my experience with my PhD dissertation, it was that persistence can win the day.
In 1991, I again filled out all the paperwork to make ASL a General Education course and again found myself before the GenEd curriculum committee. This time I brought in books, articles, and other materials that demonstrated ASL’s standing as a language. I showed them to the committee members. The committee had a new chair, but it was made up of a number of older faculty who were resistant to change. One of them stood, pulled down a world map that hung from the ceiling, and said, “Where is ASL spoken on this map? There is no country that speaks ASL. It is not a language.”
My proposal was rejected a second time.
In 1992, I made my third attempt and third appearance before the GenEd committee. By this time most of the old guard faculty had been replaced by new, younger members. I passed out research articles from a linguistics journal that established ASL as a language and made my presentation. “Oh, yes,” one of the committee members said. “I have a deaf student in my class right now. It’s fascinating to see the interpreter interpret into American Sign Language.”
Another committee member spoke up: “I know someone who knows sign language.” Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was friendly. These people were open to hearing what I had to say. When it came time for a vote, the proposal was approved. Now that it had the blessing of the GenEd committee, it passed through the remaining steps without trouble. ASL officially became a core language at Fresno State. It was an exciting achievement and one of my proudest moments.
I was able to help instill other advances in the deaf education program as well. I occasionally had to make compromises to win approval of the new proposals, but our progress was remarkable. In 1998, I became chair of the college curriculum committee. That same year, the university approved our Deaf Culture class as an upper-division course in the General Education curriculum. In 2000, we added a sign language program option—later the interpreting program—for students who wanted to study sign language but weren’t interested in deaf education. In 2003, we added another course to the General Education curriculum: Intro to Hard of Hearing and Deaf People. For me, the course was symbolic and representative of my philosophy. It showed that we welcomed anyone who was deaf or hard of hearing, including people who did not sign, who had varying degrees of hearing loss, and who were from all age groups. It demonstrated the diversity of the deaf community.
During those years, I had a few more successes as well. One of those was the publication in 1992 by Little, Brown and Company of my book Chelsea: The Story of a Signal Dog. It described the experiences Anne and I had with our beloved Belgian sheepdog, a professionally trained canine who served for years as our ears and as our companion.
Paul and Anne with their first professionally trained, fully certified hearing dog, Chelsea.
In 1995, sixteen years after I joined the faculty at Fresno State, I was named “Outstanding Professor of the Year” by the university’s faculty, staff, and students. It was a great honor, and it meant I was nominated for the same award for the entire California State University system. At a banquet, I learned that I was second choice for the state award. I was in many ways relieved that I didn’t win. Although it would have been a tremendous honor, it also would have required me to do a great deal of traveling and speaking, adding stress to my life and distracting me from my family, friends, and students. I also feared being chosen because I was deaf. I wanted to be known as a strong teacher and communications professor, not as the “deaf professor.” Finally, when I saw the accomplishments of the winner, I felt that he was the right choice. I did not want to win ahead of someone more deserving.
I had come a long way in my time at Fresno State, both personally and professionally. Thanks in part to my brother Dunbar’s sage advice, I had become more savvy and effective in my communication with the university’s faculty and staff, enabling me to help enact significant and lasting changes. My greatest satisfaction remained working with my students in the deaf education program, who now had more opportunities to pursue careers in the field than ever before.
As I looked ahead to the remaining years of my teaching career, I wondered what challenges awaited. I would soon find out.