Developing the skills necessary to care for a child with a physical disability can provide parents with the inspiration to pursue new directions. For Palestinian immigrant Suhad Keblawi of Vienna, VA, communicating with her hearing impaired son led to training as a cued language transliterator and eventually a role in the Fairfax County Public Schools.
The American Council on Education (ACE) today named Keblawi the 2006 Adult Learner of the Year, in recognition of her educational achievement and career as a role model and mentor to hearing impaired students and colleagues.
The Adult Learner of the Year Award is presented annually by ACE’s College Credit Recommendation Service (CREDIT) to an adult learner who used ACE college credit recommendations to earn a college degree or advance a career. Recipients must also demonstrate outstanding achievements in their community or workplace while successfully balancing the demands of family, career, and education. ACE’s CREDIT service reviews employer education programs nationwide and makes recommendations for colleges and universities to award up to three college credits for each course.
“What began as an educational choice to support her child has become a vocation in which Suhad Keblawi uses her education and skills to serve a larger community,” said Susan Porter Robinson, ACE vice president for lifelong learning. “She has been a role model and mentor to students and colleagues. Her exemplary career and her current pursuit of a graduate degree all demonstrate Suhad’s commitment to lifelong learning. And she’s managed all of these commitments while continuing to be a rock of support for her family.”
Keblawi’s story starts with her immigration to the United States from Lebanon in 1974. After graduating with an associates degree in biology, she placed her education on hold to concentrate on the education of her son, Nabeel, who was diagnosed with severe to profound hearing loss at age one.
To communicate with her son and to help him communicate with others, she learned to transliterate by enrolling in the “Cued Language Transliterator Professional Educational Series,” offered by Language Matters Inc.
“The Language Matters courses helped launch me into a new career path in the field of educational interpreting,” said Keblawi, who became a nationally certified cued language transliterator. Cued Speech is a methodology for educating deaf and hard of hearing students utilizing eight hand shapes in four different placements near the face in combination with the mouth movements of speech to make the sounds of spoken language look different from each other. Cued speech is used to facilitate reading and access visually spoken language.
Once her son reached school age, she began to transliterate for deaf students in the Fairfax County schools. After nearly 20 years, she resumed her college education at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, earning a bachelor’s degree in individualized studies with a concentration in multicultural communication.
“I always aspired to continue my college education,” she said. “Completing my education while simultaneously continuing my full-time career as a transliterator would have delayed graduation by several years. However, I used ACE’s credit recommendations to help complete the bachelor’s degree in a shorter time than would have been possible.”
Today, Keblawi is the Lead Cued Language Transliterator with the Fairfax County Public Schools and is currently assigned to W.T. Woodson High School. She recently began to work with the Continuing Education Department at Northern Virginia Community College and has been accepted into a master’s degree program in education at George Mason.
“Obtaining a master’s degree would not have been possible without my ACE credits,” she said. I have greatly appreciated what the ACE credit recommendations have done for my education and career. I urge all new adult learners to apply for the ACE credits and use them in their future education.”
Sponsoring the 2006 Adult Learner of the Year Award program are: MacDonald’s Corporation, Learning Tree International, Walt Disney World Resort, Center for Financial Training, Allied Business Schools, USDA Graduate School, and Delta Airlines.
Nominations were reviewed by a three-person judging panel: Clay Warren, the Chauncey M. DePew Professor of Communications at The George Washington University (DC) and an ACE CREDIT national coordinator; Victor Herbert, dean of instruction, the Fire Department of New York, and chair of the ACE CREDIT Advisory Board; and Deborah Warin, assistant director of program evaluations, ACE Center for Lifelong Learning.
American Council on Education
ACE’s College Credit Recommendation Service (CREDIT) pioneered the evaluation of education and training attained outside the college and university degree programs. For more than 30 years, CREDIT has evaluated and made college credit recommendations for nearly 36,000 courses offered by hundreds of organizations. CREDIT uses college and university faculty to evaluate courses offered by business and industry, labor unions, associations, and government agencies and recommends college credit as appropriate.
More than half a million adult learners are currently enrolled in the ACE Transcript Service, with hundreds of thousands of additional learners using these credit recommendations directly through partnerships between their organizations and colleges and universities. CREDIT serves as a vital link connecting adult learners and organizations such as Language Matters Inc. and highereducation institutions such as George Mason University.
