Sign Language Storytime

Please join the Office of Accessible Education in the last week of Disability Awareness Month by listening to the stories of Williams College alumni and faculty as they share their journeys with sign language & the Deaf/HoH community. Stories will be presented by Catherine Tan ’18, Alumni Relations Specialist Raquel Cuéllar-Parajón & Assistant Director for Intergroup Relations and Inclusive Programming & Interim Muslim Program Coordinator Aseel Abulhab ’15.

This event will be virtual.

Catherine Tan graduated from Williams in 2018.  She has studied ASL for the past ten years, and in 2018 was awarded the Chandler Fellowship where she spent the year studying different sign languages around the world.  She is currently a student at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf where she studying to become an ASL interpreter.

Raquel Cuéllar-Parajón is an educator and artist from Managua, Nicaragua who has been living in Williamstown since 2019. She believes that education opportunities should be available to all children and is passionate about Early Childhood Education, Early Childhood Special Education, and curriculum development. Raquel has studied Nicaraguan Sign Language and Interpretation from the age of fifteen, and she hopes to return to her home country in the future to support Deaf and hearing students in public school settings.

Aseel Abulhab ’15 is the Assistant Director of the Davis Center and Interim Muslim Program Coordinator with the Chaplains’ Office. She discovered a passion for sign language and working with the D/deaf community at the end of high school, and has since had the opportunity to finish a complete course in ASL, attend a summer course at Gallaudet University, and undertake a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and Fulbright Scholarship to Jordan devoted to D/deaf access to education. She works closely with the Office of Accessible Education on these issues and others, and is currently supporting an effort to bring ASL formally to campus.

More Information