A Former Engineer Makes It to The Top NTID
Tracy, who?,” joked T. Alan Hurwitz, who prefers to be addressed by Alan, though Tracy is his first name.
Alan, a former McDonnell Douglas electronics engineer, who has made NTID (National Technology Institute of the Deaf) in Rochester, New York, his second and a much longer career, was given the ultimate honor of his professional life. He has become NTID’s first deaf Dean, and has started work in this capacity on July 1st.
Armed with two electrical engineering degrees, bachelors’ from Washington University and masters’ from St. Louis University, Alan began his engineering career at the huge McDonnell Douglas complex in Missouri in 1965. Perhaps it was at the big airline plant were he started thinking about a second career – many deaf people work at Douglas, and just by mingling with them he was exposed to their needs in education, training and promotion. Thusly this background has put Alan in good stead when he accepted a new position at NTID in 1970.
Alan rose through the NTID ranks over the years holding myriad job titles such as RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) engineering education specialist, support department chair, Associate Dean, Associate Vice President and then department director.
What was interesting was that Alan did not aspire to become an engineer! Growing up in Sioux City, IA, he wanted to become a teacher of the deaf. His mother, however, after listening to gripes aired out by a disgruntled teacher at a school for the deaf, steered him away from the educational field. A deaf uncle, a role model, was a successful draftsman. Looking up to him, Alan then felt it was a good career to pursue since education was ruled out. Up came another adult – a high school guidance counselor, knowing Alan was gifted in math and science, encouraged him to get into an university engineering program.
The mere mention of the word “engineer” led Alan to think it meant engineering a train! Naturally he learned that a train engineer is much different from being a mechanical, or even electrical engineer.
Why did Alan leave McDonnell Douglas? “NTID was an opportunity for me to combine my technical skills with my dream to become a teacher for the deaf,” he explained.
Despite being on board at NTID for twenty eight years, Alan is no Ivory Tower educator. He reaches out, getting involved in a range of activities, beyond the confines of the RIT campus. He spent ten years on the board of directors of the National Association of the Deaf (MAD), and served as its president for two years (1982-1984). Interestingly enough the NAD Executive Director during Alan’s presidency was Al Pimentel, who now serves New York School for the Deaf as headmaster. Pimentel’s school sends a number of students to NTID annually.
And with the deaf Jews, Alan serves as the Vice President of the World Organization of Jewish Deaf (WOJD). Another organization that Alan has served was as a board member of the National Captioning Institute (NCI). He probably was one of the few, if not the only, board member that understood electronic jargon discussed by the NCI staff.
With the National Congress of Jewish Deaf and the Jewish Deaf Congress, Alan also served as the Vice President of Administration between the years of 1990 and 1996. That was before he has become currently involved with the WOJD.
At NTID, his boss is Bob Davila, RIT’s first deaf Vice President, in charge of NTID operations. Already an institution at NTID, Alan shows no signs of slowing up as he nears his third decade on the campus. Still relatively a young man, he has his work cut out for him as the Dean, but it is a challenge he has already been looking forward to.
