Chief of Deaf Center Has Ambitious Plans

It was something of a shock last year when the director of the National Center on Deafness at Cal State Northridge, told that his leadership had grown stagnant, was dismissed from the program he had founded more than 20 years before.

Ray Jones has held national prominence for his innovative programs that, for the first time anywhere, gave deaf students the chance to go to college without having to be secluded in a special school for the deaf.

Given Jones’ stature in education of the deaf, however, it was no surprise that a nationwide search for his replacement turned up a deaf educator who had studied in one of the programs that Jones had begun.

Early Product of Program

Victor Galloway, who succeeded Jones on Aug. 1, returned to California State University, Northridge, more than 20 years after he became one of the earliest graduates of the National Leadership Training Program for educators of the deaf.

The program has placed dozens of graduates in executive positions in schools and programs for the deaf around the country. Galloway, who was once a research chemist but more recently executive director of the Texas School for the Deaf, is one of the program’s three deaf graduates to reach top administrative positions.

Although it was Jones who first brought the leadership program its stature and federal funding, it was, ironically, the loss of the program’s federal grant last October that helped persuade university officials that Jones should be replaced, said Don Cameron, associate vice president of faculty affairs.

“The agencies in Washington believe we have not kept pace with the changes in the field,” Cameron said.

Loss of the federal money forced the university to cut enrollment in the leadership program from its usual 15 students to fewer than 10.

It will be Galloway’s job to restore the program to its former strength, Cameron said.

Interviewed after only two months on the job, Galloway carefully avoided comment on the departure of his predecessor and mentor, politely deflecting questions on the subject.

“I don’t know about that,” he said through a sign-language interpreter, at the same time speaking the words in a barely discernible voice.

But, Galloway, a youthful 58, left no doubt that he intends to make things happen.

“They do know that I am a very ambitious kind of person,” he said of the CSUN administration.

Plans to Boost Enrollment

Besides finding money to rebuild the leadership program, Galloway said he intends to substantially increase the enrollment of deaf students at CSUN, now about 200, and to strengthen funding for services the university provides to them.

In pursuit of his plans, Galloway said, he will have to lobby from the local school board to Congress.

Galloway said his first priority will be to find permanent sources of money to replace the collection of annual grants that support CSUN’s $1.2 million in deaf services. That money is used mostly to provide each deaf student with an interpreter or note taker.

That will take him to Washington, where he and the administrators of programs at several other schools for the deaf are lobbying for a bill similar to past legislation that guarantees permanent support of Gallaudet College for the deaf in Washington.

“You don’t want to continue to depend on grants,” he said. “We need to be assured of some kind of permanency.”

Research Planned

While seeking stability for existing programs, Galloway also plans to blaze new territory by starting a research project on the way deaf children acquire language.

That will take Galloway to the school board. He said he wants to open an elementary school for deaf and hearing students. CSUN students and researchers would use the school as a laboratory for studying development of deaf children, Galloway said.

First he has to find a school. Galloway said he has one in mind--Prairie Elementary, which is next to the CSUN campus--which has been closed because of declining enrollment. He said he intends to approach the Los Angeles Unified School District about reopening the school for his project.

He conceded that he could run into obstacles. But Galloway has grown accustomed to overcoming obstacles in both of his careers.

In the first career, beginning in the 1950s, Galloway was a research scientist, a rare achievement for a deaf person at a time when educational opportunities were limited.

Deaf since he was 10 months old, Galloway found himself lured into science by his grandmother’s Sears & Roebuck catalogue in which, he said, he discovered chemistry sets in the toy section.

Fascination With Chemistry

“I became fascinated with chemistry,” he said. “I would move from chemistry 1 to chemistry 2.”

His interest sent him to Gallaudet College, a federally supported school for the deaf which, at the time, offered the only college program designed for the deaf.

After graduating with degrees in math and science, Galloway found work as a high-explosives research chemist with the U. S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md.

Later he went to Lockheed, in Marietta, Ga., where he worked on the Polaris missile, designing testing procedures for the esoteric materials being developed for underwater launching. There he opened doors for the deaf as well as for defense.

“In those days we didn’t have interpreters so I had to improvise,” Galloway said.

To communicate, he and other scientists would write notes back and forth.

“Over the years I found that, when I would talk with people for a while, they would begin to understand my speech.”

“But,” he said with a coy smile that frequently breaks out, “I can’t go out on the street and start up a conversation.”

Other Deaf Workers

Lockheed, at the time, employed about 15 deaf assembly-line workers, Galloway said. Their careers crossed with his and turned it unexpectedly in a new direction.

Although they were all high-school graduates, the deaf workers were having trouble on the assembly line because they were weak in shop math and blueprint reading.

“They were obviously lacking in many basic skills,” he said.

Galloway volunteered to run classes on evenings and weekends to help them improve their skills.

Eventually, he said, he decided that, if he was going to become a teacher of the deaf, he should get the proper training.

He discovered that the only place he could do that was at CSUN, where Jones and a group of other instructors had recently established the National Leadership Training Program to put educators of the deaf through intensive graduate work.

Galloway earned a master’s degree in education, administration and supervision. He went on to earn a doctorate in rehabilitation and educational administration from the University of Arizona.

High explosives faded into Galloway’s past.

A few years ago, Galloway got a shock when he visited a laboratory like the one he used to work in. He didn’t understand any of what he saw.

“All my knowledge was obsolete,” he said, grinning again to show his total lack of regret.