Steve Hamerdinger, Director of Office of Deaf Services
Mr. Hamerdinger has been involved with the deaf rights since the early 1980’s and has been a leader in the field of mental health and deafness since the early 90’s. He has been the Director of the Office of Deaf Services since its inception. Before coming to Alabama in January, 2003, he was Director of the Office of Deaf and Linguistic Support Services at the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
After receiving has Masters Degree in Counseling at Gallaudet University in 1989, Steve moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to work as a mental health counselor at the New Mexico School for the Deaf. His practice there focused on deaf children and their families. While living in New Mexico, he was instrumental in helping to establish the New Mexico Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and was elected as the first Chair of the Commission. He is a Past President of the New Mexico Association of the Deaf.
Currently the Past President of ADARA, an organization of professionals networking together for excellence in service delivery to individuals who are Deaf or hard of hearing, Steve has served on numerous appointive boards and task forces. Recently appointed to the Alabama Licensure Board for Interpreters and Transliterators, he has also served on the Alabama Governor’s Commission on Disability. He has chaired the Olathe (Kansas) Disabled Person’s Advisory Board and served on the Kansas Mental Health and Deafness Task Force, the Missouri State Task Force on Deaf Education, the Missouri Board of Certification of Interpreters, and the Missouri Supreme Court Commission on Courts and the Disabled.
A sought after teacher and lecturer, Steve was the first Reba Hill Memorial Lecturer on Pediatrics at the Baylor University Medical School. He has been a frequent speaker at the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri, an adjunct faculty member of the Kansas City Kansas Community College, where he taught sign language and Deaf Culture and William Woods University where he taught social work with people who are deaf. An engaging and enthusiastic speaker, Steve is in national demand as a trainer and consultant on deafness and Deaf Culture as well as child development, counseling and other mental health and deafness and hearing loss related topics. He is also in demand as a motivational speaker and entertainer.
Charlene Crump, QMHI Project Director
Charlene Crump,B.S., CI/CT, ASLTA-Q, QMHI. Mental Health Interpreter Coordinator, Project Director
Ms Crump is the statewide Mental Health Interpreter Coordinator for the Office of Deaf Services, Alabama Department of Mental Health. In this capacity, Ms. Crump has been responsible for developing the Mental Health Interpreter Training initiative and developing certification standards that have been adopted by DMH and Alabama State Code. Her work in Mental Health Interpreter training has received national recognition including by the National Alliance of Mentally Ill (NAMI) has been internationally cited by the Charter of Linguists and described by Dr. Neil Glickman, Director of the Deaf Inpatient Program at the Westborough State Hospital in Massachusetts, as “establishing the national benchmark” for mental health interpreting.
Charlene is a frequent presenter and consultant at various national and state venues, presenting on mental health interpreting. She created and operates several listservs and moderates a monthly online discussion forum related to current research in mental health and deafness/interpreting through JacksonvilleStateUniversity’s distance program.
Charlene is Adjunct Instructor, teaching sign language classes at AuburnUniversity at Montgomery. She currently serves as a board member of the ADARA and also as president of the Alabama Chapter of the American Sign Language Teacher’s Association (ASLTA), assisted in the passage of a state law that recognizes American Sign Language as a foreign language in K-12 settings. Additionally, she served a six-year stint with the first cohort appointed to the Alabama Licensure Board of Interpreters and Transliterators and served two terms as Chair.
Charlene is a contributor to the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) Standard Practice Paper focusing on Mental Health Interpreting and has served on expert focus groups including work with NortheasternUniversity, Boston regarding mental health interpreting. She is a Local Testing Administrator for the RID Testing System, RID Certificate Maintenance Program (CMP) Administrator and serves as the Sign Language Proficiency Interview (SLPI) coordinator for the department.
Shannon Reese
Shannon Reese, M.A., NCC, Project Staff
Ms. Reese is the Deaf Services Coordinator for the state with the Alabama Department of Mental Health. She previously worked as a Regional Coordinator for the Deaf in Region II/Birmingham area. Before that she worked as a resource trainer for the CAPE-D/HH (Center for Abuse Prevention and Education for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing children) and has provided trainings to various schools/programs serving the deaf and hard of hearing children. She has also worked on a curriculum designed to help school teachers/administrators teach sexual abuse prevention to children from K-12. Previously, she was an assistant director for the Gallaudet UniversityRegional Center in Massachusetts where she developed workshops, conferences relating to the area of deafness.
She has had a multitude of experiences working with deaf and hard of hearing clients in the mental health setting. She currently holds a certification as a National Certified Counselor and is a SLPI evaluator. Shannon received her B.A. in psychology from the University of Georgia and her M.A. in Mental Health Counseling from Gallaudet University.
In addition, she has served various positions here in Alabama: she was the President of Council of Organizations serving Deaf Alabamians (a consortium of Alabama agencies and organizations whose mission is service to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing; or programs with broader missions that have an identifiable, significant component of services to deaf and/or hard of hearing individuals), formerly the President of Gallaudet University Alumni Association of Alabama, used to be the Publicity Director for Alabama Association of the Deaf 2003-2007, and was on the committee for revising the RID’s Mental Health Standard Practice Paper.
She is also pursuing her certification as a deaf interpreter and has passed the written test, is working on taking the performance part of the test in the near future. She has assisted with the Mental Health Interpreting Institute for the last 5 years.
