{"id":27278,"date":"2019-05-24T15:26:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T19:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2019\/05\/24\/ashleigh\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:15:30","slug":"ashleigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2019\/05\/24\/ashleigh\/","title":{"rendered":"A Graduation Love Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_20614\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2019\/05\/Ashleigh-Bennet.jpg-print.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20614\" class=\"wp-image-20614 size-medium\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2019\/05\/Ashleigh-Bennet.jpg-print-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-20614\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Ross and his fiance Ashleigh Bennet, a 2019 graduate of the American Sign Language Interpreting Certificate Program and a 2017 graduate of the Deaf Studies Program.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When Ashleigh Bennet was attending middle school in Manchester, NH, she met John Ross, the first Deaf person she had ever known.\u00a0\u00a0 More than 10 years later, John is now her fianc\u00e9 and the two have a five-year old daughter, who is also Deaf.<\/p>\n<p>Bennet says that from the moment she met John, she fell in love with American Sign Language and the Deaf culture and determined that is what she would like to study and make her life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, May 18, Bennet graduated from Northern Essex with a certificate in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.necc.mass.edu\/learn\/credit-programs\/american-sign-language-studies\/american-sign-language-interpreting-certificate\/\">American Sign Language Interpreting<\/a>, and she interpreted for her proud fianc\u00e9 who was sitting in the front row.\u00a0 She earned her associate in Deaf Studies from Northern Essex in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Bennet is practicing now for the New Hampshire ASL interpreting license screening test and plans to continue on for a bachelor\u2019s degree, which is required for national certification, at UNH Manchester or UMass Lowell.\u00a0 She would like to build her career as an interpreter in an educational setting.<\/p>\n<p>With her immediate family, who is Deaf, and her fiance\u2019s large Deaf family, Bennet gets plenty of practice honing her sign language skills.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Essex offers an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.necc.mass.edu\/learn\/credit-programs\/american-sign-language-studies\/american-sign-language-studies-associate-degree\/\">Associate Degree in American Sign Language Studies<\/a> and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.necc.mass.edu\/learn\/credit-programs\/american-sign-language-studies\/american-sign-language-interpreting-certificate\/\">Certificate in Sign Language Interpreting<\/a>.\u00a0 To learn more, contact enrollment services, <a href=\"mailto:admission@necc.mass.edu\">admission@necc.mass.edu<\/a> or 978 556-3700.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashleigh Bennet Fell in Love with ASL and Deaf Culture in Middle School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - 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