NAD Expands College Bowl Competition

Editor: The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has been holding a College Bowl at its national conference since 1988, and it has included only three major Deaf programs: Gallaudet, NTID, and CSUN. The NAD is now opening the competition up to include ANY school with a significant deaf and/or hard of hearing population. So if your school has lots of smart kids with hearing loss, here's your chance to grab some national attention!

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Silver Spring, MD -The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is pleased to announce the expansion of its College Bowl Competition, held during biennial conferences, to include a fourth team for the 2008 College Bowl Finals.

Ever since its inception in 1988, the College Bowl has involved the three charter teams, California State University at Northridge (CSUN), Gallaudet University, and National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology (NTID).

Since this is the first competition involving the expanded format, the fourth team will be added to compete with the existing charter teams. In 2010 and beyond, the NAD hopes to have a true competition format where no berths in the Finals are guaranteed.

With this announcement of the expanded format for the College Bowl Competition, the NAD is calling for new participants.

Criteria for participation: 1) The team must be composed of deaf and hard of hearing, full-time undergraduate students, currently enrolled in four-year college or university. 2) The college or university must have at least 20 deaf or hard of hearing students currently enrolled. Interested schools will be screened to determine the fourth team. It is the desire of the NAD to involve teams representing colleges and universities with fairly large programs for deaf and hard of hearing undergraduate students to ensure continuity beyond 2008.

Interested programs and individuals are to contact the Youth Programs Coordinator, Jennifer Yost Ortiz at www.nad.org/contactus for more information including application information and College Bowl Rules and Guidelines. The deadline to express an interest is Friday, March 28, 2008.

About the NAD

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) was established in 1880 by deaf leaders who believed in the right of the American deaf community to use sign language, to congregate on issues important to them, and to have its interests represented at the national level. These beliefs remain true to this day, with American Sign Language as a core value. As a nonprofit federation, the mission of the NAD is to preserve, protect, and promote the civil, human, and linguistic rights of deaf Americans. The advocacy scope of the NAD is broad, covering the breadth of a lifetime and impacting future generations in the areas of early intervention, education, employment, health care, technology, telecommunications, youth leadership, and more. For more information, please visit www.nad.org.

About the NAD Conference

Rotated annually among the four regions of the United States, Biennial NAD Conferences, held in the even numbered years, traditionally bring together more than 2,000 deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened, deaf-blind and hearing consumers, parents, youth, professionals, educators, organizational and corporate representatives for five days of professional development, enrichment, training, networking, governance meetings, receptions and related evening events.