A sign of progress: ASL major new at Ohio State

Earlier this year, a new language major launched at The Ohio State University. Students can now earn an undergraduate degree in American Sign Language (ASL).

Kristin Wickham-Saxon has been signing since she was a child. When it was discovered that a younger cousin was born deaf, Wickham-Saxon and her mother joined family sign language classes at her cousin’s preschool.

“Having her in my life has enriched it in ways that I can’t put into words,” she said. “I see the value in the work we do because I see the impact it makes in the daily life of my cousin, my deaf friends, when they can interact more easily in their day-to-day lives. That’s something we want to bring to our students in the major.”

The ASL: Applied Communications and Community Studies major covers both language and intercultural competence as well as Deaf cultures and histories. Not a member of the Deaf community herself, Wickham-Saxon worked with the university’s ASL program to ensure deaf perspectives are included in the coursework.

“Our deaf and hearing instructors all had a say,” she said. “And all of us are connected, in some way, to Deaf communities. … Everyone is bringing a different worldview to the table.”

Wickham-Saxon said the university’s ASL courses always had a waitlist, particularly for ASL 1101, the introductory course. Now, there are three students officially enrolled in the major, with more planning to follow. There are 150 students enrolled in the ASL Studies minor, and Wickham-Saxon is optimistic about future enrollment. 

“There are 180 high schools in Ohio that offer ASL,” she said. “I reached out to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to let them know that we exist. My jaw hit the floor. I had no idea there were that many schools. Just think about how many potential ASL majors are out there in Ohio.”

Like in many spoken languages, Deaf history is part of learning ASL, Wickham-Saxon said.

“You can’t understand a language without understanding the people who are the users of that language,” she said.

Exclusion is a throughline experienced by deaf people, she said. Recognizing that helps students understand how to work as partners with deaf communities, how ASL evolved and how it functions today.

For example, ASL sentence structure differs from spoken English. When deaf people are encouraged to speak and sign simultaneously, the sentence doesn’t follow ASL syntax and the facial grammar is removed, making it harder for everyone to understand one another.

In addition to classroom learning, students have the chance to engage in service-learning with deaf communities outside of Ohio State.

“We’re lucky,” Wickham-Saxon said. “In central Ohio, we have the largest deaf population in the state. In Columbus, we have the Ohio School for the Deaf just a couple of miles up the road. There are deaf education programs in Columbus City Schools and Upper Arlington Schools. Local agencies and organizations provide a range of services to meet the unique needs of deaf people.

“We want the course to connect students with those organizations and hopefully, students will get authentic learning experiences. They’ll have a chance to understand family dynamics.”

In the United States, around 70% of families with deaf children don’t sign, Wickham-Saxon said. Not having access to language can have devastating consequences for children.

“If you don’t have a solid language by the time you’re 5,” she said, “you’re playing catch-up for the rest of your life, linguistically and cognitively.  And families, if they don’t know the language, they can’t be a language model.”

While majors are learning to work with and within deaf communities, the skills they learn in the program are transferable.

“The things we’re looking at are accessibility in a broader sense,” Wickham-Saxon said. “The things our students will learn, they can take with them into any job, any profession. This is a skillset they can take anywhere.”

Accessibility and service are important to Wickham-Saxon.

“That’s the root of why I wanted to teach ASL at Ohio State,” she said. “That land-grant mission, serving the community. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”