THE MIND HEARS MENTORING FORUM FOR DEAF AND HARD-OF-HEARING ACADEMICS

While ~17% of the adult population has significant hearing loss, we remain under-represented within geosciences and academia. One primary contributor to our under representation is lack of mentorship and a peer community. Deaf and hard of hearing (deaf/HoH) academics at predominantly hearing institutions often remain isolated without guidance on how to manage the myriad of communication challenges facing academics, such as teaching, leading group meetings, addressing questions at conferences, participating in discussions at professional meetings, and serving on grant proposal panels. The success of scholars at all ranks depends on mastering these communication challenges. To fill the mentoring gap, The Mind Hears aims to provide the following for academics at all career stages with some degree of hearing loss:

• a forum for crowd-sourcing ways to minimize our challenges and share strategies for thriving in academia with hearing loss.
• a network of d/HoH academics who promote hearing inclusive strategies at universities.

The title of the blog derives from the Victor Hugo quote “What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The only deafness, the true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.”

Through social media (@theMindHears) and networking, the blog (www.themindhears.org) has been increasing its reach to deaf/HoH academics within a wide range of disciplines all around the world. The blog features over 13 profiles of deaf/HoH scholars as well as over 48 posts about different aspects of our lived experiences. Hearing loss is variable and can affect us in many and different ways – but through this shared blog we hope to reduce isolation in our community and build a community toolbox of resources and ideas, providing something of value to all of those who visit and contribute to our discussions. The strategies that we’ve used to grow this mutual mentoring network can be implemented by others to better support their communities.