Department
Family and Child Studies

Program
Family and Child Studies

Office Location
Hall Memorial Building (HMB)  S 131

Office Hours
Mon 4-4:30 p.m., Tues 2-3:30 p.m., Wed 1-2 p.m., Thur 2-3:30 p.m., Fri 1-2:30 p.m.

Email Address
deborah.krichbaum@gallaudet.edu

Dr. Krichbaum has spent most of her professional life in college teaching. She graduated with a M.S. degree from the University of Tennessee in December 1973 and began teaching the next month at Carson-Newman College in East Tennessee. Looking for a change in environments, she moved to Frederick, Maryland in 1976 to teach at Hood College. After one year, she decided she should explore work opportunities outside of academia to make sure she was making the right career choice. For the next several years she worked as a trainer for the University of Maryland Cooperative Education Service and then as a free-lance writer.

Dr. Krichbaum decided to return to college teaching because no job she experienced or considered compared with the experiences she had working with college students in the classroom. In 1982, Gallaudet hired her, so she celebrated her twenty-fifth year the Fall of 2007.

Her Ph.D. dissertation was: Two Mothers and One Child: Adoptive Mothers' Lived Experience with Birth Mothers in Open Adoption. Her Master's thesis was: Patterns in Household Tasks of 150 Knoxville, Tennessee Families. Her current academic focus is in the area Family Studies, a minor the department introduced in 2001.

On a personal note, Dr. Krichbaum loves to read and is addicted to the television program, House, MD. She lives with her husband and daughter in Silver Spring, Maryland. She met Dan Geller on a lucky blind date and they have been married for 30 years. Their terrific daughter, Anna, turned 21 in 2007. Anna's love for animals has been contagious, so much so that they currently share their home and their hearts with three dogs (two standard poodles and a miniature poodle) and periodically foster animals for the animal shelter.

On June 15, 2008, Dr. Krichbaum was blessed by the birth of a grandson, Bear Maxwell Geller. She is thrilled to be a hands-on grandmother for this delightful little boy!