Ann E. Graziadei '71, an associate professor in the Department of Physical Education and Recreation at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., has won acclaim for her accmplishments as a professor, scholar, athletic trainer and Red Cross volunteer.
Graziadei, a native of Pelham, N.Y., competed on the SUNY Cortland field hockey team and was active with the Women's Athletic Association and Theta Phi Alpha sorority. She joined the Official's Club which led to her serving as a collegiate and high school volleyball official for the next 25 years. Under the tutelage of the late John Sciera '52, Graziadei worked as a student trainer with the SUNY Cortland baseball team. She scored the highest marks in a National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA) exam and received the NATA's Eddie Wojecki Award. She earned three physical education degrees - a bachelor's from SUNY Cortland in 1971, a master's with a specialization in athletic training from Indiana University in 1974, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1998.
Over the years, she has worked as an athletic trainer at the World Games for the Deaf in Denmark, Bulgaria and New Zealand, as well as for the Goodwill Games and the Friendship Games. Graziadei's work with Cortland Professor M. Louise Moseley in adapted physical education fostered a lifelong interest in the field. As a Cortland student, she became active in the American Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) and is now a life member.
Graziadei taught physical education and coached at Solvay (N.Y.) High School. After earning her master's degree, she became an instructor and head athletic trainer at Plymouth (N.H.) State College and then at Barnard College. She was then a lecturer and coach at the University of Maine-Presque Isle.
She accepted a professional staff position with the American Red Cross' Northwest North Carolina Chapter. During the next quarter-of-a-century, Graziadei worked closely with American Red Cross programs and became a member of the organization's national faculty and chair of a national head-quarters committee. In 1984, she became a training coordinator with Project DART in Athens, Ga. In 1985, she was elected into the Phi Kappa Phi national honor society at the University of Georgia. That same year Graziadei joined the faculty at Gallaudet University, the world's only liberal arts university for people with hearing disabilities. Her success at Gallaudet earned her induction into the University's Phi Alpha Phi honor society in 1988. She was voted Phi Kappa Phi Teacher of the Year in 1990.
UPDATE: Graziadei passed away on March 1, 2020, at age 70.
