Author Paul Ogden and his wife, Anne
Paul W. Ogden has spent a lifetime exploring what it means to be an effective communicator. He is an educator, author, mentor, scholar, and advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing. Born deaf into a hearing family, Paul is the youngest of four sons, including one who was also born deaf. Paul grew up in the South during the tumultuous years of the Civil Rights movement. As a boy, he met Martin Luther King Jr. in the Ogden home and was old enough to appreciate his father’s bravery and compassion when Dunbar Ogden led members of the “Little Rock Nine” through a white mob to Central High School.
Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computers from Antioch College and master’s and doctoral degrees in educational psychology and deaf education from the University of Illinois, Champaign‐Urbana. For more than thirty years, he has served as a professor of Deaf Studies at California State University, Fresno, where he is currently Professor Emeritus. He uses his knowledge and talent to teach students to
be advocates for the deaf, serve as a support system for parents, and be a resource for children, families, and other key individuals in the lives of deaf and hard‐of‐hearing children. Paul was named Outstanding Professor of the Year at Fresno State and placed second overall for the same award for the California State University system comprised of 23 campuses.
Among his major publications are The Silent Garden: Understanding Your Hearing Impaired Child; Chelsea: The Story of a Signal Dog; The Silent Garden: Raising Your Deaf Child, and El Jardin Silencioso: Criando a Su Hijo Sordo, a Spanish translation of the first five chapters of The Silent Garden. Gallaudet University Press lists both volumes of The Silent Garden as classics. Among Paul’s recent honors is the Lifetime Achievement Award, conferred in 2012 at the annual conference of California Educators of the Deaf.
Paul lives in Fresno with his wife, Anne Keenan Ogden, one of the first members of the deaf community to become a registered nurse. She retired as a certified registered rehabilitation nurse in 2011 after forty years of service.
Paul Ogden can be reached at paulo@csufresno.edu.