Roberta Cordano

Roberta "Bobbi" Cordano (born November 29, 1963[1]) is the 11th president of Gallaudet University.[2][3] Cordano is the first deaf woman to become president of a U.S. university and the first woman and first openly LGBT person to be officially installed as Gallaudet President.

Roberta Cordano
11th President of Gallaudet University
Incumbent
Assumed office January 1, 2016
Preceded by	T. Alan Hurwitz
Personal details
Born	(1963-11-29) November 29, 1963

Life

Cordano obtained her Juris Doctor degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1990. She was assistant attorney general for Minnesota.[4] She was assistant dean at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota,[5][6]

Cordano was awarded the Hubert Humphrey award by the University of Wisconsin.[7] She is among the first ten deaf women in the United States to have earned a Juris Doctor (JD) degree, and is among the first 50 deaf women to have earned a doctoral degree, overall.[8]

Cordano is the first deaf woman to become president of a U.S. university, after Jane Kelleher Fernandes became the first deaf woman of a U.S. college at Guilford College in North Carolina. She is the first woman to be installed as Gallaudet President. Elisabeth Zinser had held the Gallaudet presidency for less than one week, during the Deaf President Now protest, and was never officially installed.[9]

References

1. The Herald-Press (Saint Joseph, Michigan), December 13, 1963, p. 5.
2. Gallaudet University: Cordano: New Deaf President
3. Presidential Search Finalists
4. https://www.aauw.org/2016/05/17/roberta-cordano-her-own-way-to-the-top/
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20070810012339/http://www2.hhh.umn.edu/cgi-bin/directory.pl?uid=3794
6. State of Minnesota proclamation of Roberta J. Cordano Day, Sept 30 2016
7. Roberta Cordano '90 Wins Humphrey Award at Univ of Wisconsin site
8. Holcomb, Mabs and Sharon Wood. 1989. Deaf Women--A Parade through the Decades. Berkeley, CA: Dawn Sign Press, p. 87.
9. GU: President-Select

External links

External media
Audio
Gallaudet President Navigates From World Of Hearing To Sound Leadership Of The Deaf, NPR, January 21, 2017
WMAU Radio Interview of Gallaudet University’s President Roberta Cordano, 11/21/2016
Video
Gallaudet President Cordano lectures at UW Linguistics/ASL, University of Washington, Jan 12, 2018

• Common Past, Common Future: USDA & Gallaudet Create Opportunities for Students , USDA, Dec 09, 2016

Further reading

• "Deaf Person of the Year". Deaf People. Retrieved 22 March 2019.

Academic offices
Preceded by Alan Hurwitz	President of Gallaudet University January 1, 2016 – present	Succeeded by Incumbent