Thirteen students attended the 2012 Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing; 64 students have completed the Summer Academy during since its inception in 2007. The Summer Academy is an academically challenging program designed for students who are deaf and hard of hearing with skills in math and/or science who may be considering computing as a career. Students obtain college credits for attending a programming course and visiting tech companies in the Seattle area, including Adobe, Isilon, Google, Microsoft and Valve. They also learn about current research in computing and meet role models who are deaf and hard of hearing, who talk about their jobs as academic settings such as Rochester Institute of Technology. Students learn about careers and graduate study in computing.
Graduates of the Summer Academy have gone on to intern at companies like Cisco Systems, IBM, Microsoft and NASA; and some of the earlier graduates who have completed college are now working at Aurora Health Care and Microsoft. For more information on the Summer Academy, see www.uw.edu/accesscomputing/dhh/academy.