William B. Cutler, 1944
B.A., Denison University
M.A., Stanford University
Palo Alto, Calif.
Citation awarded June, 1994
Bill spend the World War II years working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee as a supply engineer, and began his first post in college administration at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Following a move to California and a job with Allstate, Bill returned to college business management with a new community college, Foothill College, which grew from 450 to 45,000 students and a faculty of 35 to 1500.
Bill retired in 1980 as Director of Business Services for the Foothill Community College District because of a severe hearing loss, but he certainly didn’t stop working. He served two terms as president of the national “Self Help for Hard of Hearing People,” or SHHH, and edits the SHHH-Bay Area Newsletter. Through his efforts he provides encouragement, information, and social interaction to the hearing-impaired and provides education on causes of hearing loss. He challenges the rest of us to accept and include the deaf in society.
He has been a disability consultant for the California Office of the State Architect and California Office of the State Fire Marshall, and he is a member of the California Rehabilitation Advisory Commission, the National Captioning Institute of the Consumer Advisory Board and Technical Commission of the International Federation of the Hard of Hearing.
Bill has been recently widowed. He has two sons and lives in Palo Alto, California.
