of Hawaii, Manoa, and served for five years at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind In Hawaii, Fernandes provided leadership that recognized American Sign Language as a bona fide language. Fernandes also fostered the understanding of Hawaiian Sign Language as the Sign Language of Indigenous Peoples on the islands. She received the Alice Cogswell Award in 1993 from Gallaudet University for valuable service on behalf of deaf citizens. Upon resuming service to Gallaudet University in 1995, Fernandes served as Vice President of the National Deaf Education Center. The Education of the Deaf Act of 1986 Fernandes led the development, evaluation, and dissemination of projects to improve deaf education nationwide. Derived from three priorities: (1) literacy for all deaf children, (2) the transition from high school to postsecondary education, work, careers, and (3) family involvement in a deaf child's life, her leadership encompassed the nationally acclaimed Shared Reading Project, Families Count! (Levels 1, 2, and 3), Decision Maker, and The Nine Areas of Literacy books and videotapes. In 1999, she proposed the creation of the Cochlear Implant Education Center at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School which was established in 2000. Through this inclusive program, she enabled clarity that American Sign Language and cochlear implant technology are both important to the development of deaf infants, toddlers, and youth. In 2000, President I. King Jordan named Fernandes provost of the university without consulting the faculty, a move which Jordan called "a terrible mistake". In spite of a rough start, Fernandes' accomplishments included playing a lead role in Gallaudet's capital campaign that raised $28 million for the Sorenson Language and Communication Center, a second comprehensive campaign that raised $39 million, $9 million over its goal, creating the World Deaf Leadership scholarship with funding from the Nippon Foundation, and tripling the dollar amount of research grants awarded—including the National Science Foundation Science of Learning grant and a $1.2 million federal appropriation to engage students and professors in scientific research. Her signature work is reflected in the Board-approved strategic plan "New Directions for Academic Affairs" which called for Gallaudet University to model what it means to be an inclusive deaf university in all aspects of its operations, academic, and community life. Inclusion at Gallaudet University refers to a hierarchy of privilege within the deaf community overlaid and compounded by other diverse human attributes; for example, being deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind, having deaf,