DBI

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  • Home
  • About
    • News
    • Staff
    • Core Team
    • ACT Team
    • DeafBlind Mentors
    • DBI Ambassadors
    • Collaborators
    • Partners
  • Training
    • → Login to DBI Moodle
    • Online Learning
    • Training Connections
    • DBI Institutes (DBII) >
      • Meet the 2018 cohort
      • Meet the 2019 cohorts
      • Meet the 2020 cohorts
      • DBII 2020 (applications closed)
      • DBII Participant Summary
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact

Meet Our STAFF

CM Hall | Co-Director

CM
CM Hall, Ed.M., NIC Advanced, EIPA K-12, is Co-Director of the National Center on DeafBlind Interpreting and from 2007-2016 served as the Project Coordinator of the Western Region Interpreter Education Center at Western Oregon University.

She holds a Master’s in Education with an emphasis in LGBTQ and Gender Studies from Oregon State University and a Bachelor’s in ASL/English Interpreting from Western and completed their one-year interpreter training program prior to that. CM has worked in K-12 and post-secondary environments as a staff interpreter and also brings considerable experience with platform and DeafBlind interpreting. CM has volunteered in the DeafBlind community since 1992 and created an academic service-learning project for ASL-fluent students to engage with the DeafBlind community, partnering with the Washington State DeafBlind Citizens organization and the annual Seabeck DeafBlind Retreat.

CM teaches DeafBlind Interpreting in Western’s interpreting program and is a past co-chair of the National Task Force on DeafBlind Interpreting. She is currently the Communications Chair for the DeafBlind Member Section of RID and formerly served as Secretary for DBMS, as well as having served on the national RID board as the former Member at Large. Among other roles, she previously served as Oregon RID President and Vice President and currently serves as ORID Scholarships Chair. In 2014, under the NCIEC grant collaborative initiative, CM co-coordinated the first-ever DeafBlind Self Advocacy Training of Trainers with 10 DeafBlind leaders from across the country.

In 2015, CM was recognized by the Oregon Association of the Deaf for her advocacy work and was a featured TEDx presenter on the topic of linguistic access as a social justice issue.
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In her spare time, CM produces the Coming Out Monologues, a storytelling event highlighting LGBTQ+ community members’ experiences across the state of Oregon and gleefully lives oceanside in Newport, Oregon.

Heather Holmes | CO-DIRECTOR

Heather
Heather Holmes is Co-Director of the DeafBlind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center (DBI). Her responsibilities include development of online materials and courses, management of a national online resource repository, and provision of technical assistance to stakeholders across the country. Her areas of interest include online accessibility, adult learning, content and course development, and curriculum design. Heather codeveloped Map It: What Comes Next, an online, interactive, transition program and curriculum for Deaf and and Hard of Hearing youth. This program focuses on the development of self-advocacy and self-determination skills, and is currently being used by students across the United States. Heather also teaches an Assistive Listening Technology course at Western Oregon University.

Heather has a Master of Science degree in Education: Information Technology from Western Oregon University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Arizona State University. She is a nationally certified (NIC – Advanced) American Sign Language interpreter and a member of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID).
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Heather has a Deaf partner and son and understands first-hand the importance of quality interpreters and equal access to information. Heather believes in the power of collaboration, creative thinking, and that laughter and kindness make every interaction more effective.

Elayne Kuletz | Web Manager

Elayne
Elayne Kuletz serves as the Web Manager for the DBI National Center. Elayne is responsible for establishing, developing, and maintaining a framework of web technologies to support the Center’s projects. Elayne has experience working with a variety of nonprofit organizations, private companies, and educational institutions to provide technology implementation planning and instructional design services. She also contributed to the development and facilitation of the Open Hands, Open Access: Deaf-Blind Intervener Learning Modules (OHOA) through the National Center on Deaf-Blindness. The OHOA modules are a national resource, created to improve intervention services for children who are deaf-blind or have dual sensory loss. Her professional interests include educational technology, online teaching and learning, and instructional design. In addition to her work for DBI, she teaches for the Division of Teacher Education at Western Oregon University and provides freelance consulting services.
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Elayne has a Master of Science degree in Education: Information Technology, a graduate certificate in Instructional Design, and a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages. Her favorite quote is from Thomas Edison: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

Konnie Sayers | Grants and Contracts Technician

Konnie
Konnie has a B.S. in Business Administration from Oregon State University and has done accounting type work for the last 40 years.  18 years with U.S. Bank and 22 years with WOU (16 years as Athletic Business Manager and the last 6 years as Grants and Contracts Technician for the Regional Resource Center on Deafness). 

​On a personal note, she enjoys spending time with her husband, motorcycle riding, dining out, staying connected with friends, playing card games, and watching TV while knitting or crocheting baby blankets.

Sybille Guy | Evaluator

Sybille
Sybille Guy serves as the evaluator for the DBI National Center project, ensuring the evaluation activities are completed on schedule and within specified parameters.
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Sybille has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the area of Quantitative Psychology. She is currently the Director of The Research Institute’s (TRI) Center on Research, Evaluation & Analysis (CREA), and she has an extensive background in team leadership and project management. She is the Lead Evaluator on TRI’s Oregon’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) project. She is also currently the researcher/evaluator on Project Executive Functioning (EF). She has decades of experiences in market research and marketing, working as the Vice President for Research & Analytics in a market research firm. She has also served as the Institutional Research and Special Projects Specialist in the Office of Academic Affairs at Washington State University Vancouver. She has also recently served as the data analyst/evaluator for Oregon’s Department of Human Services Community Needs Assessment of the Deaf, hard of Hearing, Late Deafened, Deaf Blind, as well as cochlear implant and hearing aid users.

PATRICK ALDRICH | Evaluator

Patrick
Patrick Aldrich received his master’s degree in Zoology from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Prior to his graduate work, he spent 5 years in various field biology positions, studying a wide array subjects from Bowerbird mating systems in Australia to integrated pest management of ground squirrels in Northern California. For his graduate work, he studied the spatio-temporal variation of pollination networks in Hawaiian tropical dry forests. Following his graduate work, he was the project director for a project that used spatial analyses to study the random correspondence of fingerprint patterns. Through his work, he has acquired extensive experience in biostatistics. He is currently a statistician and evaluator for various projects at The Research Institute at Western Oregon University

Kailee goodrich, Student Worker

Kailee
Kailee Goodrich hails from California and is an interpreting student at Western Oregon University. She is involved as a volunteer in the Washington state DeafBlind community, volunteered with DBII 2018 for DBI, and works with Jelica Nuccio and Tactile Communications. She has also volunteered at The Lighthouse for the Blind’s annual DeafBlind Retreat at Seabeck. Aside from working for Costco for 8 years, Kailee loves working out and adding gifs to group text messages. She has happily partnered with her sweetie, Mark, for 5 years.  Kailee is a bright star and a quick protactile ASL study and we are thrilled to have her as a part of DBI!
DBI envisions a world that celebrates the life and culture of DeafBlind persons, a world where DeafBlind people have influence and control over their destiny and dreams.
DeafBlind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center
Regional Resource Center with Deaf communities (RRCD)
​Richard Woodcock Education Center
Western Oregon University
345 N Monmouth Ave
Monmouth, OR 97361
dbi@wou.edu
Federal Disclaimer: The contents of this website were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal government.
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RSA Grant H160D160005. DBI is a grant funded by the US Department of Education RSA CFDA #84.160D, and is a project under the Regional Resource Center with Deaf communities at Western Oregon University.