Dartmouth student wins Learning Through Listening award

Posted 04/28/01

Kathryn Elizabeth Adams, a first-year student at Dartmouth, will receive the Marion Huber Learning Through Listening (LTL) award at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic's national achievement awards celebration in New York City. Actor Danny Glover, who is dyslexic, will present the award to Adams on Monday, April 30.

Adams is one of three top winners of a $6,000 national LTL award, which is presented annually to high school seniors with dyslexia or other serious learning disabilities, who have demonstrated superior scholarship, leadership and service to others. A member of the recording organization for since 1994, she has borrowed about 20 books.

Adams graduated from The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston with a 4.4 grade point average, due to advanced placement courses. She belongs to the National Honor Society and Vanguard program, was treasurer of the school's singing groups, captain of the swimming team, leader of a church youth group and founder of a Bible study class. At Dartmouth, she rows on the women's crew team and sings with the College Glee Club and X.ado, a Christian a capella group. She takes private voice lessons as well.

Adams finally put a name to her problem with "painfully slow reading and terrible spelling" late in the spring term of her freshman year of high school when she saw a TV show about dyslexia. Even after being formally diagnosed with dyslexia, she says she still encountered skepticism and resistance.

"The bureaucratic system's conclusion, I realize now, is an all-too-familiar one: that you can't be gifted and disabled at the same time," she said.

Using the recording organization's tapes, Adams aid "was the equivalent to having an intelligent friend sitting with me. Reading with these tapes ... made accessible to me what would have otherwise been off limits for me before, particularly great literature. These books on tape have filled an enormous need for my academic life to this point and will continue to be vital for my future academic and personal fulfillment."

Adams is pursuing a medical career.

Nationwide, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has more than 91,000 members in kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. Taped textbooks are read and recorded by more than 5,700 trained volunteers working in 32 studios around the country. The master library in Princeton, N.J., houses more than 83,000 textbook titles in every subject and grade level. Last year, the organization circulated a quarter of a million accessible textbooks among its members.