Pat Sitlington Award 2022

WSU Alumna earns prestigious award 

By David Blehm – College of Education 

A recent WSU College of Education Ph.D. graduate has been recognized by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) for her research. 

Anwar Alsalamah was given the Pat Sitlington Emerging Researcher Award by the CEC’s Division for Career Development and Transition. 

She earned the honor thanks to her dissertation which highlighted the unique experiences of 17 women who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and are attending higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. 

Alsalamah has a background in working with youth and young adults with disabilities. Previous work with DHH students in Saudi Arabia allowed her to notice some of the struggles that these students encountered during their transition to postsecondary schooling. This included a lack of adequate preparation to support them in achieving successful postsecondary transition outcomes after graduating high school. 

Alsalamah said that her WSU studies have allowed her to deeply consider the challenges that DHH students face in Saudi Arabia. She linked this to the knowledge and experience that WSU provided, which led to her to conduct her research, and took roughly a year to complete. 

“I am extremely honored to receive this award from the Division on Career Development and Transition,” Alsalamah said. “It provides great recognition of the importance of my research, which aims to raise the voices of young women who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), and who represent a low-incidence disability, as it explored their postsecondary transition experiences.”  

Alsalamah also expressed gratitude to the DHH students who participated in the study, her advisor, Marcus Poppen, and WSU College of Education faculty members.  

The Pat Sitlington award is given for exemplary graduate student research in the field of transition education for individuals with disabilities.