Angel Wang told the story each semester in her first class with students in ¶¶Òőappâs program in Deaf & Heard of Hearing: How her father, who was born deaf in rural China, taught himself to read and write by memorizing thousands of Chinese characters on wooden blocks in the printing shop where he worked.
âShe was inspired by his talent and determination â and by his optimism and readiness to embrace new things,â recalls Wangâs former doctoral student Elune Shi (Ph.D. â20). âShe told us that childrenâs education is a complex equation, and we have to keep an open mind about how to support and motivate deaf and hard of hearing kids to read.â
Keeping an open mind â to methodology, to children and to possibility in general â was the hallmark of Angel (Ye) Wang, who passed away on February 12th at the age of 43.
I want my students to broaden their horizons and be good teachers and good human beings.
âYe (Angel) Wang, Professor of Deaf & Hard of Hearing
âProfessor Wang passionately believed in the talent and limitless potential of all individuals,â wrote President Thomas Bailey in a message to the TC community. ⶶÒőapp and the world have lost an extraordinary teacher, scholar and human being far too soon.â
Bailey called the loss of Wang â Professor of Deaf & Hard of Hearing (DHH) and Director of the Program in Deaf & Hard of Hearing â âa devastating blow for her students, to whom she was fiercely devoted; for the College, where she was an innovative program and classroom leader; to the field of deaf education, for which she was a bright star; and to her family, whom she adored.â
Those sentiments were echoed in testimonials by Wangâs many friends, colleagues, students and former students.
WHAT MATTERED MOST Wang and her children, Amy Su and Stone Su. (Photo courtesy of the family of Ye (Angel) Wang)
âYe was definitely an angelâa gentle, brilliant soul that belied a tenacious inner world determined to contribute to the improvement of individuals who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing,â wrote Peter V. Paul, a leading authority on English language and literacy development for DHH individuals, Editor of American Annals of the Deaf, and Wangâs mentor and collaborator at The Ohio State University, where she earned her doctorate.
âShe was never the loudest person in a meeting, but instead, the thoughtful contributor who was open to hearing everyoneâs perspective,â says Laudan Jahromi, Professor of Psychology & Education, and Director of TCâs Program in Intellectual Disabilities/Autism. âShe had that calm energy that people wanted to be around.â
¶¶Òőapp and the world have lost an extraordinary teacher, scholar, and human being far too soon.
âTC President Thomas Bailey
âShe conducted the kind of research that directly shaped and changed the day-to-day lives of deaf and hard-of-hearing students,â says Sonali Rajan, Associate Professor of Health Education. âIt was such impactful work.â
And Wangâs frequent research partner, Beverly Trezek, Associate Professor and Tashia F. Morgridge Chair in Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, wrote that âAngelâs contributions to research will leave a lasting impact on the field and her legacy will live on through the students and colleagues who were fortunate to work with her.â
A New Path to Literacy
It was a 2006 paper co-authored with Trezek â published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education â that vaulted Wang into the first rank of her field.
Many deaf and hard-of-hearing students struggle to progress beyond grade-school competency as readers, largely because they do not have access to spoken or signed language early in their lives at home. At school, many are not taught to form mental representations of phonemes â distinct units of sound that, in any language, distinguish one word from another, nor are they taught how to map their sign language to print..
She told us that childrenâs education is a complex equation, and we have to keep an open mind about how to support and motivate deaf and hard of hearing kids to read.
âElune Shi (Ph.D. â20)
Wang and Trezek showed that Visual Phonics, a system of hand symbols created by the parent of a deaf child that represents the English languageâs 44 phonemes, could help DHH children form those mental representations. Their study demonstrated that, with a year of instruction from a phonics-based reading curriculum supplemented by Visual Phonics, these tools enabled DHH kindergartners and first graders to significantly improve their beginning skills in word reading and reading word comprehension. The acquisition and improvement of those skills was not related to degree of hearing loss â a finding that has drawn strong interest because people who have a profound hearing loss and yet become successful adult readers are also often found to be phonetic readers, typically after they have firmly acquired a first language.
MENTOR EXTRAORDINAIRE Wang, shown here with Elune Shi (Ph.D. '20) was known as a fierce advocate for her students. (Photo: TC Archives)
The use of Visual Phonics has declined in recent years as cochlear implants and other new technologies have enabled or improved hearing for many children. But the work by Wang and Trezek helped establish that some deaf children could learn language and learn to read and write just as typically developing children do, passing through the same stages of language and literacy acquisition. That finding has led to other new teaching strategies, enabling more children with hearing loss to read and write.
It has also sparked new research on how DHH children who use hearing technology can process spoken language and learn to speak themselves. For example, over the past five years, by providing wearable recording devices to DHH children who are learning to listen and talk through use of hearing technology, Wang amassed a unique database of thousands of hours of the language the children hear. Using accompanying software, Wang and her colleagues have measured the childrenâs spoken language development.
Sound Without Fury
Wangâs work put her on one end of a continuum within the field of deaf education that believes that accessing the phonology of a language with visual tools such as lip-reading and visual phonics, as well as assistive hearing technology, can be the most efficient pathway to literacy. Another end of the continuum stresses the use of sign language and fingerspelling to help DHH children map meaning to print. The debate between the two camps is often vigorous, but Wang frequently invited alternate viewpoints to the discussion.
Ye was definitely an angel â a gentle, brilliant soul that belied a tenacious inner world determined to contribute to the improvement of individuals who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing.
âPeter V. Paul
âI first met Ye (Angel) Wang when we were invited to co-edit a two-volume special issue on reading for the American Annals of the Deaf. Angel and I had diverse perspectives about reading and I imagine she felt as queasy as I did about the collaboration,â wrote Jean F. Andrews, Professor Emerita in the Department of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. âBut when papers proffering views different from hers rolled in, Angel enthusiastically welcomed them. Such was her refreshing response in a frequently divided field.â
LINE OF INQUIRY Wang studied at The Ohio State University with Peter V. Paul, and encouraged Maria Hartman (Ph.D. â15), now Lecturer in TCâs Deaf & Hard of Hearing Program, to finish her doctorate. (Photo: TC Archives)
To Laudan Jahromi, Wangâs willingness to work across ideological lines reflected a humility born of her commitment to the children she served.
âIt was never about her,â Jahromi says. âShe was open to different ideas because ultimately she cared about identifying whatever worked for this population of children.â
Both Wangâs belief in phonics and her flexibility about methodology may have grown out of her own experience as a âCODA,â or child of a deaf adult, a role that demands both creativity and a practical mindset, focused on results.
She attracted excellence. She also opened opportunities for me and so many of her doctoral students through her connections, by facilitating grants, and by inviting all her students to publish with her. You didnât leave the program without having a few publications.
âMaria Hartman, Lecturer, TC Deaf & Hard of Hearing Program
âPeople tend to go into this field because of a direct connection with deafness, and she, like me, had deaf parents,â says Robert Kretschmer, Professor Emeritus of Education & Psychology, Wangâs predecessor as Director of TCâs Deaf & Hard of Hearing program. âYou end up acting as more than just an interpreter. At age 12, I was explaining to my father the differences between different types of car insurance. Some kids who play that role are resentful, and others recognize it and embrace it. I suspect she was one who embraced it.â
Broadening Horizons
Wang was, in fact, quadrilingual â she spoke both Mandarin Chinese and English and was fluent in both Chinese Sign Language and American Sign Language â and thus was acutely aware of the role of phonology.
âThere is a phonic component to Chinese writing, even though itâs a character print language,â Kretschmer says. âChinese characters have embedded markers for phonemes, though theyâve lost that meaning over time.â
In Chinaâs school system, Wang was not able to pursue a career related to language. She was tracked instead into law and in 1999 earned her college degree in that field, which, Hartman says, she never found fulfilling. She left China to pursue her true passion, earning her masterâs degree in OSUâs College of Education in 2000 and completing her doctorate there in 2005. Her dissertation became the basis the first of her three books, (Jones and Bartlett Learning, 2011), co-authored with Peter Paul.
She was an advocate for universal design for learning and inclusion for all, which included inclusion in the highest levels of academic society. In every Ph.D. cohort she led to the doctoral degree, she ensured that a significant number were deaf or hard of hearing, and that both deaf and hearing students received all the necessary support to complete their studies and contribute high quality research.
âJulia Silvestri, Lecturer, TC Deaf & Hard of Hearing Program
From 2005 through 2008, Wang served as Assistant Professor at ¶¶Òőapp. She left for Missouri State University, where, for the next six years, she coordinated the Universityâs graduate program to prepare teachers of DHH students. She returned in 2014 to take over the DHH program at TC.
On her watch, the program has increased its international focus and drawn a growing number of doctoral students.
MILESTONE MOMENT Wang at TC's Convocation with Julia Silvestri, now a Adjunct Assistant Professor in TCâs program, and Maria Hartman. (Photo: TC Archives)
âShe attracted excellence,â Hartman says. âShe also opened opportunities for me and so many of her doctoral students through her connections, by facilitating grants, and by inviting all her students to publish with her. You didnât leave the program without having a few publications.â
âShe was the most devoted mother any of us had ever met â there was nothing she wouldnât do for her children [Amy Su, an undergraduate at Columbia University, and Stone Su, a New York City high school student] â and she brought some of that same advocacy to her students,â Jahromi says. âSheâd fight tooth and nail to get extra scholarship dollars for whoever needed it. But she was equally fierce in setting high standards, because she so wanted her students to be ready.â
Wang spent hours reading and critiquing papers, helping students think through research questions and methodologies, and â ever the stickler for detail â schooling them in the arcana of American Psychological Association formatting. She also required students to be up to speed in other fields related to DHH.
She was the most devoted mother any of us had ever met â there was nothing she wouldnât do for her children â and she brought some of that same advocacy to her students.
âLaudan Jahromi, Professor of Psychology & Education
âAngel was without boundaries academically,â says Erika Levy, Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). âShe was always at talks in our program and very aware of everything that was going on in our field. Students are required to take courses outside of our program, and many took classes with her. They loved her.â
A year ago, Wang, Levy and Hartman were awarded a major multidisciplinary grant from the U.S. Department of Education that pays for students in DHH and in CSD to take a certain set of courses, attend an annual conference and obtain placements in their fields. Wang also collaborated closely with Jahromi and R. Douglas Greer, Professor of Applied Behavior Analysis, to reimagine a joint doctoral course sequence that combined the research methodologies across DHH, ID/Autism, and the ABA program, which brings a behavioral focus to children on the autism spectrum and those with other language delays.
Wang also was deeply committed to including and supporting DHH students in TCâs program.
âDr. Wang highly valued deaf people, their perspectives, and their capacity for achievement,â says alumna Julia Silvestri (Ph.D. â16), now Adjunct Assistant Professor in the program, who is herself deaf. âShe was an advocate for universal design for learning and inclusion for all, which included inclusion in the highest levels of academic society. In every Ph.D. cohort she led to the doctoral degree; she ensured that a significant number were deaf or hard of hearing, and that both deaf and hearing students received all the necessary support to complete their studies and contribute high quality research.â
Yet, true to form, Wang was equally likely to apply insights from deaf education to her hearing students. Prior to the COVID pandemic, she had always ensured the required accommodations for deaf and hard of hearing students who took her classes, insisting on both live captioning and two sign-language interpreters â but when the College moved all courses online last spring, she decided to provide captioning for all of her students.
âStudents who were previously very quiet â particularly international students, who often were struggling to keep up in what may be their second or third language â are now much more involved,â Wang said in a story about digital teaching that appeared on TCâs home page in May. âPartly itâs the captioning, but Zoom also has a raise-your-hand feature, and in my class now, thereâs always a queue. Itâs very orderly but it makes things more interactive â maybe because people have more time to think.â
[Read about Wangâs innovative online teaching during the pandemic.]
She added that Zoom also served as âan object lessonâ for her students who were themselves K-12 teachers trying to figure out how to best serve their own students.
âItâs like the principles of universal design in architecture, which I often talk about â the way that wheelchair ramps benefit people with strollers, too,â she said. âThe people in my class are using what they learn, often the very next day, and some are teaching online to preschoolers â imagine that!â
But there was still another dimension to Wangâs teaching that drew students to her â an aspect reflected in an informal book club she started in one course after the pandemic began, in which the reading list touched on topics that included gender, school choice and the power of nature and nurture.
âI want my students to broaden their horizons and be good teachers and good human beings, so we read books about education, psychology and health,â Wang said.
Elune Shi sensed that commitment when she first read about Wang some years ago.
âWe were both from China, where special education is still very under-developed, and where you donât find many faculty who are focusing on or caring about these kids,â Shi says. âShe really inspired me because she was talking about the need to open up possibilities for them. So I wrote to her, and she encouraged me to apply.â
Some months later, Shi came to TC for an interview and met Wang for the first time.
âI waited outside her office. When she opened the door, the first thing she said was, âYouâre early.â And then she smiled and invited me in.â
âJoe Levine
Special thanks to Maria Hartman for her assistance in preparing this article.
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