• Ph.D. University of Maryland, Curriculum and Instruction: Reading
• Masters degree, University of Denver, Deaf Education
• Bachelor of Arts degree, U. of Colorado, Elementary Education

Dr. Carol LaSasso, currently a Professor in the Department of Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences at Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., has a B.A. degree in Elementary Education from the University of Colorado (1965), a Master of Arts degree from the University of Denver in Deaf Education (1969) , and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland in Curriculum: Reading (1978). Dr. LaSasso joined the Gallaudet faculty in 1969. She taught graduate courses in the diagnosis and remediation of reading difficulties of deaf/hh students in the Dept of Education at Gallaudet and supervised more than 250 student teachers in Deaf Education for more than 35 years. Dr. LaSasso was the lead architect for two of Gallaudet's five Ph.D. programs (Audiology and Deaf Education). She directed the Ph.D. program in Deaf Education for 20 years before joining the Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences Department at Gallaudet in 2003 to develop and direct the new Ph.D. program in Audiology and pursue her scholarly interests with other HSLS faculty related to Cued Speech and cued language.

Dr. LaSasso has published extensively in the areas of reading and deafness, addressing phonological abilities, vocabulary, reading comprehension, test-taking abilities, and compensatory (visual matching) test-taking strategies of deaf children and youth. Between 1990 and 2010, She has secured more than $7 million for Gallaudet via eight U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) personnel preparation grants. She has served as President of the Special Interest Group in Reading and Deafness for the International Reading Association and served as a consultant during the storyboard stage for the PBS Reading Between the Lions reading series for young children.

Between 1980 and 1990, Dr. LaSasso directed the highly-touted Gallaudet Summer Diagnostic Reading Clinic for deaf/hh children and Satellite Summer Reading Clinics at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT and at the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf in Wilson, NC. These programs providing direct instruction to more than 400 deaf/hh children between the ages of 8-19 years, included a battery of assessments related to reading comprehension, including English phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as phonics, age-appropriate "fund of information" knowledge, reading comprehension, and test-taking skills.
     Dr. LaSasso is currently an affiliated researcher with the Center for the Study of Learning team at Georgetown University that is using behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine language and cognition with hearing and deaf individuals from oral, signing, and Cued Speech backgrounds. She is also an affiliated researcher with the Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Literacy (VL2) at Gallaudet University. In 2007, one of Dr. LaSasso's publications related to the efficacy of Cued Speech for natural language acquisition and the development of reading for DHH children was one of two articles nominated by the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education for inclusion in the Oxford University Press centenary collection as a seminal article published in the past century. Dr. LaSasso's most recent (2010) publications include a 465 page, first of its kind, textbook on Cued Speech and Cued Language for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children (with 25 chapters authored by 42 scholars in the United States and Europe) and a peer-reviewed article in the current edition of Trends in Amplification, which describes findings from five lines of research that are converging to promote the use of Cued Speech with children with cochlear implants to enhance speech perception and natural acquisition of English and other traditionally spoken languages.

Maryland Reading Certification

Colorado K-6 Teaching Certification

Council on Education of the Deaf