Achieving the Dream
January 29, 2020
Written by Laura L. Acosta www.utepmagazine.com/spring-2020
By providing access to a high-quality and affordable education, UTEP has created a pathway for graduates to achieve their full potential and lead prosperous professional lives.
“Our students put in the hard work, often at great sacrifice, but over and over again we see that with a UTEP degree they are positioned to have impactful and highly rewarding careers,” said Gary Edens, Ed.D., vice president for student affairs at UTEP.
UTEP offered Betsy Bañuelos the services and support she needed to become the first student who is deaf to graduate from the Clinical Laboratory Sciences (CLS) program in 2016. Today, she is the first hearing-impaired microbiology supervisor at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the hospital’s only employee who is unable to hear.
“UTEP’s education was great, but most importantly it elevated my capacity to communicate and work with others at a professional level,” Bañuelos said.
At UTEP, the first-generation college graduate worked with interpreters from the University’s Center for Accommodations and Support Services, who translated what was said during class into sign language.
Rather than finger-spell long and complicated words such as “parasitology” and “electrophoresis,” which didn’t exist in American Sign Language, Bañuelos generated 400 new signs to create a lexicon of clinical terms.
It was that drive that kept her from giving up on her dream to become a medical professional after 11 failed job interviews.
According to a 2019 report published by the National Deaf Center, approximately 53% of people with hearing loss were in the workforce in 2017, compared with 75.8% of people who hear.
Although Bañuelos worked successfully in a UTEP lab, it was up to her future employers to look beyond her deafness and focus on her qualifications.
She was surprised when Memorial Medical Center (MMC) hired her as a medical technologist in 2017, but she was confident enough in her education to know that she could get the job done. Two years later the hospital promoted her to supervisor.
Sofia Romo, the director of the hospital’s laboratory, said she was impressed with how Bañuelos has never allowed her hearing impediment to define who she is.
“It is great to work with Betsy as she is smart, driven, enthusiastic and full of curiosity,” Romo said. “Ever since the first time I met Betsy, I knew how brave she is and I could not wait for her to join the MMC lab team. In her short time with us, she has gained the respect of team members inside and outside the laboratory. I am excited to see how she continues to grow professionally.”
Bañuelos’ lab is equipped with a videophone line and fire alarms with strobe lights that catch her attention in case of an emergency. She communicates with the lab’s sixty employees with speech recognition apps such as Google’s Live Transcribe on her tablet or phone. Bañuelos also reads lips and uses an interpreter during staff meetings.
“During job interviews, people would ask me, ‘How do you communicate because you’re deaf?’” Bañuelos said. “There are so many different ways to communicate nowadays. There’s so much technology today like email and text message. There’s reading lips and writing back and forth. Communication doesn’t stop.”
More information can be found at: www.utepmagazine.com/spring-2020
Memorial Medical Center has a vision to create a place where people choose to come for health care, physicians want to practice, and employees want to work. Memorial takes pride in giving back to the community and going above and beyond. They are creating a legacy of care for our neighbors today and for generations to come.
About Memorial Medical Center – At Memorial Medical they are committed to providing excellent care to our community. Their facilities provide comprehensive services to residents throughout the Southern New Mexico. They strive to offer the latest technology in imaging services, orthopedics, cancer and cardiac care. Their commitment to high-quality care is strong. Their team is committed to providing compassionate care and they bring new and innovative programs to show who matters the most - our communities.