Roz Rosen

Roslyn Goodstein was born in The Bronx on February 22, 1943.[1] Both she and her brother were born deaf to deaf parents; they were raised learning American Sign Language and English.[2]

She attended the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens, graduating in 1958.[1] At the time, Lexington used exclusively oral education, but the students used sign language when instructors were not present.[2] She earned two degrees from Gallaudet College: a bachelor's degree in art education (1962) and master's degree in the education of the deaf (1964).[3] Rosen performed in several productions while in Gallaudet's drama club.[2] Later she went on to earn a Ph.D. in education from Catholic University of America (1980).[3] Her dissertation was titled Recommendations on Educational Placement and Services for Hearing-Impaired Students by Four Types of Administrators.[3]

She and her husband, Herbert Rosen, met while they were both students at Gallaudet and were married in 1961.[2] They have three children.[2]

Rosen started her career as a rehabilitation counselor at the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, working there from 1964 to 1966.[3] For the next decade she worked for several organizations in Washington, D.C., including as a sign language instructor for the Bureau of the Education of the Handicapped, a films specialist for Captioned Films for the Deaf, and in several roles for the Model Secondary School for the Deaf.[3] In 1977 and 1978, she coordinated Gallaudet College's program to educate people about the recently passed Education for All Handicapped Children Act.[3] From 1978 to 1983, Rosen served as the Director of the Special School of the Future, a program sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Gallaudet, working with demonstration schools.[3]

Her connection to Gallaudet continued when she was appointed Dean of the College of Continuing Education in 1981.[2] She served in that role until 1993, when she was named vice president for Academic Affairs.[2] She was the first female Deaf Dean and the first Deaf female provost at the Gallaudet.[2] In that position, Rosen led all university academic and student support programs, undergraduate and graduate degree programs, as well as continuing education and outreach programs.[4] Rosen resigned as vice president in 1999.[5]

In 1990, Rosen was elected president of the National Association of the Deaf, making her the second deaf female president of the organization.[3] In that role she was a frequent representative for the American Deaf community, including providing her expertise on the topic of cochlear implants for the show 60 Minutes in 1992.[3] After her term as NAD president was up in 1993, she went to on become a board member for the World Federation of the Deaf from 1995 to 2003 and an international officer of the federation from 2005 to 2006.[2] Simultaneously, Rosen served as the executive director of the Council on Education of the Deaf from 2000 to 2006.[2]

Rosen became the director of the National Center on Deafness, located on the campus of California State University Northridge, in 2006.[4] After her retirement in 2014, she continued to serve on multiple boards and wrote the children's book Deaf Culture Fairy Tales in 2017.[6]