American Sign Language Program to combine with the College of Arts and Sciences

Ohio State’s American Sign Language Program has undergone a reorganization that will affect students registering for classes beginning Summer quarter.

Starting July 1, OSU’s ASL Program will become unified with the College of the Arts and Sciences.

Before the reorganization, the ASL Program was supported by the Department of English, the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences and the College of Education & Human Ecology’s School of Teaching and Learning.

The reorganization will help students during the registration process, but students should not see much of a change in the classroom, said Joseph Steinmetz, executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The primary focus of the reorganization was to help unify the administrative side of the program.

“We recently made a decision to house the program within the Foreign Language Center to concentrate our campus resources in one place instead of having the classes spread to three different units,” Steinmetz said. “It should be easier for students to find the ASL courses as they will be offered, coordinated and managed in one location.”

Lauren Sanders, associate coordinator of the ASL Program, said the reorganization is very logical.

“The bottom line is it truly is going to streamline the process for the staff,” Sanders said.

“For us, the administration is different. We’re not a department,” Sanders said when asked how the ASL program differs from other foreign languages at OSU. “All of our staff is senior lecturers or casual lecturers, but the quality of education is still there.”

The classes offered through the ASL Program fulfill OSU’s undergraduate foreign language general education curriculum requirement.

OSU’s American Sign Language Program does not currently offer students the option of a major or minor, but that could change.

“There have been committees in the past that have been formulating a deaf studies minor, but nothing has been formally approved,” Sanders said. “Right now our immediate attention is getting through the merge and preparing for semesters.”

Students looking to register for ASL classes will find the courses listed under the titles American Sign Language 101, 102, 103 and 104.

The ASL Program will be administered through the Foreign Language Center under the supervision of Professor Diane Birckbichler.

For more information about the ASL Program, visit asl.osu.edu.