Overview
The ASL program at Ohio State is unlike any other ASL sequence in the country because it involves contributions from three Colleges with each College providing a unique perspective. The three participating Colleges/Departments are: Education, Humanites (Department of English) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (Department of Speech and Hearing Science).
Their unique viewpoints are as follows:
Education: Because of current issues around deafness and deaf/hard-of-hearing students in education (whether mainstreamed or not), and the long history of deaf education developing in tandem with larger American values in our history, ASL instruction plays an important role in the College of Education. Young children who are not deaf have also been shown to greatly benefit from the use of sign language (in research done right here at Ohio State). Both deaf/hard-of-hearing and hearing students alike would benefit if all teachers in public schools knew some ASL.
Department of English: Because ASL is indeed a modern language, it will be enriched from within a historical, literary, philosophical, sociolinguistic frame as are the other major modern languages (French, German, Spanish, etc.) taught within the Humanities
Social and Behavioral Sciences (Department of Speech and Hearing Science): Because of the contributions of speech-language and hearing professionals toward bettering the lives of people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing—while interacting heavily with them or their significant others—ASL instruction is also of paramount importance in that profession (and to other medical and allied medicine fields).
