| Scholarship
Award of UCP Chicago Women's Board
2008 Scholarship Award Winner
The UCP Women’s Board is pleased to announce Maria Nikolaou, one of two very special scholarship award winners for 2008! (Please also see Albert Nutall)
Maria Nikolaou is a most enterprising and dynamic young student. She has made her time count productively in every area of her life: school, church, and community.
Maria recently graduated from Maine East High School where she made extraordinary accomplishments. Maria made honor roll twice and won Student of the Month in both English and history. She won again another time in keyboarding, as well as a senior class award in history, and two scholarships from Rochester Institute of Technology! It’s no surprise to read the glowing letters of recommendation Maria’s instructors wrote for her.
In addition to the extra school work Maria took on, she vigorously participated in extra-curricular activities, such as Hellenic Club (with traditional Greek dancing) and she volunteered at the school’s radio station, WMTH-FM. Maria was well-liked by her high school classmates.
Outside of school, Maria plays on the church basketball team, along with the church’s Junior Olympics volleyball and track teams. Aside from her school and church responsibilities, Maria is also an active member of the Orpheus Hellenic Folklore Society.
All of Maria’s accomplishments would be a challenge for any student, but Maria deserves even more praise, for successfully managing it all despite profound hearing loss.
Being an excellent student requires resourcefulness, so and Maria learned lip-reading and uses assistive technology. She uses C-Print, an electronic transcription device that converts speech to text in the classroom. This allows her to read everything her instructors say in their lectures.
C-Print is a speech-to-text system developed at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), a college of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), as a communication access service option for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in educational environments. It was developed by researchers to improve the classroom experience for students at both the secondary and college levels.
Another helpful tool Maria uses is IP Relay. IP Relay offers deaf and hard of hearing persons the ability to place phone calls over the Internet. Calls can be placed either by the Call Now option which automatically connects to a relay operator, or through the Custom Calling option which allows users to customize communication. For more information, please see http://www.ip-relay.com/faq.html.
We know Maria will continue to apply her strong work ethic and fully participant at Rochester Institute of Technology this coming fall. We wish her the best as she undoubtedly moves toward a highly successful career!
We are proud to present Maria Nikolaou as the fifth recipient of the UCP Women’s Board Scholarship for Assistive Technology. Maria joins our Assistive Technology Scholarship Winners of 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
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