Faculty/Staff Profile
By Frank A. Kruppenbacher
Published in NTID FOCUS, Fall 2006 / Winter 2007
Page 9
When he awoke from a coma brought on by meningitis, Harry Lang’s life as a high school sophomore in Irwin, Pa., veered suddenly from a path of eventual employment in a Pittsburgh steel mill.
“That’s probably where I would’ve ended up, if I had not become profoundly deaf,” says Lang.
Instead, he transferred to the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (WPSD), where his interest and aptitude in science and math emerged. Lang later was accepted at Bethany College in West Virginia, where he majored in physics.
After graduating in 1969, he landed a job at RIT/NTID, where he taught physics for 20 years and chaired the NTID Physics Department from 1980 to 1985. Lang then led the Office of Faculty Development at NTID while teaching graduate courses in science and math education. At the same time, he earned a graduate degree in Electrical Engineering from RIT and a doctorate of education in Science Curriculum and Teaching from the University of Rochester.
“Although I never planned to be a teacher, I am thrilled that I became one,” says Lang, who in 2006 received the RIT Trustees Award for his outstanding record of academic scholarship.
Since 1984, Lang has authored and co-authored several books, including Deaf People in the Arts and Sciences; Silence of the Spheres; A phone of Our Own; and From Dream to Reality: A history of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. He is co-authoring Moments of Truth: The Journey of Robert R. Davila, Deaf Educator, and his latest solo work Teaching from the Heart: The Life and Work of Robert F. Panara is scheduled to be released in 2007.
Witness to his evolution as an educational researcher, university professor, and author is Harry’s wife of 33 years, Bonnie Meath-Lang, professor in NTID’s Cultural and Creative Studies Department and artistic director in NTID’s Performing Arts Program.
“In a way, Bonnie and I are what RIT is all about,” says Lang. “We foster the sciences, engineering, and technology as well as the humanities and the arts.”