BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTING AN INTRO TO AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE

COURSE IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Prepared for
Audran Downing
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
College Park, MD

Prepared by
Mary Wight
UMD Student

November 26, 2017

 Mary Wight
1310 Beverly Ave.
Odenton, MD 21113

November 26, 2017

Audran Downing
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
1120 Francis Scott Key Hall
College Park, MD 20742

Dear Audran Downing:

The attached proposal discusses the benefits of introducing an Introduction to American Sign
Language (ASL) course as a foreign language option in the College of Arts and Humanities.
Many students have increasingly become interested with American Sign Language and the easy,
visual nature of the foreign language. There have been attempts in the past to introduce
American Sign Language as a foreign language option within the College of Arts and
Humanities but these have failed due to reasons outside of student interest.

This study was designed to examine benefits in three areas:

 Student learning in cognitive development, career advancement, and cultural immersion

 Employment of adjunct teachers to reduce university costs
 Diversity values to ready students for the real world and increase variety of cultures

In this report, you will find tactics to successfully implement an Introduction to American Sign
Language course within the College of Arts and Humanities so that students may comfortably
satisfy their foreign language requirement. The recommendations I present are aimed to benefit
students, as well as the University of Maryland, College Park. These recommendations are:

 Introductory ASL class within the College of Arts and Humanities

 Field trips
 Deaf events

I would be pleased to discuss any questions or concerns regarding this proposal and its
conclusions with you at your request. Thank you for your time and consideration with me in
preparing this proposal.

Sincerely,

Mary Wight
UMD Student
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY………………………………………………………………………iv

INTRODUCTION: INTRO TO ASL IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES……1

BACKGROUND: AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE………….1

DISCUSSION: STUDENT LEARNING, EMPLOYMENT, AND DIVERSITY………………..2

Student Learning........................................................................................................................2

Cultural Immersion…………………………………………………………………..……..2

Cognitive Benefits………………………………………………………………………….2

Career Advancement………………………………………………………………………..3

Employment……………………………………………………………………………………3

Diversity……………………………………………………………………………………..…4

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS………………………………………………..5

APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………..6

WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………………..7

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The implementation of an introductory American Sign Language (ASL) course as a foreign

language can benefit the University of Maryland, College Park students, as well as the College of
Arts and Humanities. Professor Holly Smith at the University of Maryland, College Park,
authorized this study within the requirements of the Business Writing course.

The conclusion that the students and the university would benefit from implementing an
introductory American Sign Language course in the College of Arts and Humanities comes from
SurveyMonkey responses that indicated student interest level and validation of American Sign
Language as a foreign language, as well as professional literature and online data gathering.

Analysis of the data revealed benefits in three areas:

 Student learning. Research shows that students benefit in cultural immersion, cognitive
development, and career advancement from taking a foreign language course.
 Employment. Research shows that hiring adjuncts is an increasing strategy for
universities to reduce cost of hiring full-time instructors, and have more success finding
potential, qualified employees to teach limited, in-demand courses.
 Diversity. The University of Maryland, College Park promotes the value of diversity,
hence why the global engagement requirement exists within the College of Arts and
Humanities to allow students to choose from a variety of languages and get ready for the
real world.

Three of the following recommendations have been made based on the previous benefits
described:

 An introductory American Sign Language course as a foreign language option in

the College of Arts and Humanities.
 1-2 field trips to ensure student learning in the form of cultural immersion,
cognitive benefits, and career advancement.
 Deaf events to ensure cultural immersion and diversity of deaf culture learning.

On the basis of these findings, it is highly recommended that housing an introductory ASL under
the College of Arts and Humanities will benefit the University of Maryland, College Park, as
well as UMD students to promote student learning, additional employment opportunities, and
diversity. These are all important values that the university should expand upon in order to
further enhance accreditation and education.

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INTRODUCTION: INTRO TO ASL IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) students pursuing a B.A. degree in the College of
Arts and Humanities (ARHU) are informed of the global engagement requirement that requires
them to study a foreign language in one of three ways: the traditional route of taking foreign
language coursework to the designated level at UMCP, cultural immersion through a study
abroad trip, or an individually-designed engagement experience (“Global Engagement
Requirement,” 2016). When looking through the list of foreign languages, it is apparent that
American Sign Language (ASL) is not an option to complete this global engagement
requirement but it can be an exemption if the course is available in another department, such as
the Hearing and Speech Sciences department or the Counseling, Higher Education, and Special
Education department. These courses are usually limited and difficult to get into. This creates a
hassle for ARHU students that have taken ASL in the past and wanted to continue, as well as
native speakers of ASL who can’t have the choice of demonstrating their proficiency in the
language.

This study was designed to analyze the benefits of housing an Intro to ASL course in the College
of Arts and Humanities for students pursuing a B.A. degree. Specifically, the study seeks
answers to these questions:

 How would an Intro to ASL course benefit student learning?

 How should the university handle employment for this introductory ASL course?
Would hiring adjuncts lower university costs?
 How would accepting American Sign Language as a foreign language at the
University of Maryland, College Park enhance diversity and accreditation?

BACKGROUND: AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

American Sign Language has increasingly been recognized as a foreign language and is claimed
by Lane, Hoffmeister, and Bahan (Harrington, 2004) to be the fifth most used non-English
language in the United States. Although various censuses have yielded varying figures of sign
language users in the U.S., it is apparent that ASL has made its mark as a visual-gestural
language used by many hearing and non-hearing people in the United States. High schools and
universities alike are awarding credit for sign language courses.

With high schools and community colleges offering course credit for American Sign Language,
it should be mandatory that universities also accept these credits as students transfer their credits.
Universities should keep up with the changing world of foreign languages, and if American Sign
Language is to be recognized as one of the top foreign languages used, there should be an
acceptance of ASL course credits so that foreign language requirements can be met with ease.
Although the University of Maryland, College Park offers American Sign Language, it is not
housed under the College of Arts and Humanities, which creates a problem for students looking
to fulfill the mandatory global engagement requirement.

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In a SurveyMonkey that was dispersed on November 27, 2017, there were 25 undergraduate
students taking Communication and/or Professional Writing courses that responded to whether
or not they considered American Sign Language to be a foreign language. 72% of students
responded yes, whereas the other 28% disagreed or didn’t know. This further indicates the
widespread belief that American Sign Language is mostly considered a foreign language that can
be studied.

DISCUSSION: STUDENT LEARNING, EMPLOYMENT, AND DIVERSITY

The results of this research show that having an Intro to American Sign Language course within
the College of Arts and Humanities will benefit three areas within the University of Maryland,
College Park: student learning, employment, and diversity.

Student Learning

There are three factors to consider in students learning ASL: cultural immersion, cognitive
benefits, and career advancement.

Cultural Immersion

When learning any foreign language, it is important to allow students to learn the culture of the
language as well so that they can broaden their views of the world and acquire a deeper
understanding of cultural differences. Deaf culture is rich with historical oppression and an
admirable resilience. The chance for students to immerse themselves in the deaf community
allows them to interact with deaf members and dissipate any biases they previously could have
had. Luckily, the University of Maryland, College Park is located near Gallaudet University,
which was the first school for deaf students in the U.S. UMD students who take an introductory
ASL course are conveniently near a wide population of the deaf community so that they can have
the chance to immerse themselves within deaf culture.

Cognitive Benefits

Research has shown that “studying a foreign language has intrinsic benefits for cognitive ability
and academic achievement in other subjects” (Landis, 2017). According to the American Council
on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), a number of studies proved that bilingualism is
known to increase student academic achievement on standardized tests, reading abilities,
linguistic abilities, and scientific hypothesizing. Translating this to university-level, it is proven
that students can cognitively benefit from learning American Sign Language.

Additional research from the Dana Foundation by Viorica Marian and Anthony Shook (2012)
found that bilingual brains could have better attention and task switching skills since they have to
switch from one language to another. This better attention skill can also be referred to as
inhibitory control ability by having the ability to ignore irrelevant information such as additional
languages that can interfere with the language being communicated at the moment. Bilingual
users are observed to have faster task switching skills when they were studied to switch between
categorizing objects by color and shape.

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Additionally, bilingualism can positively affect one’s health by combating cognitive diseases
such as Alzheimer’s disease since bilingual users practice controlled language switching which
benefits higher gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex (Marian, Shook, 2012).
Since American Sign Language is a visual-gestural language, it is possible for users to reap the
cognitive benefits of switching between spoken and signed language as it requires one to juggle
two languages and switch.

Career Advancement

A majority of employers prefer bilingual employees as it sets them apart from other applicants.
When companies are expanding globally, having a diverse and bilingual team of employees is
useful in communicating across different languages. Bilingual employees can actually expect a
higher salary than their monolingual coworkers. Albert Saiz did a study in 2002 that reported a
two percent increase in salary for bilingual employees depending on the language acquired. This
doesn’t seem like much but the added value could lead to an accumulated value of $67,000 over
the course of 40 years, as explained by Hitchcock (2017).

According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2017), the job field of interpreters and translators is
a fast-growing field with projections predicting growth of 17 percent from 2016 to 2026, which
is much faster than any other occupation. If students continue to pursue a career out of the
foreign language that they choose, this will lead to higher economic benefits than any other field
they choose.

Employment

A problem that might be faced with having an introductory ASL course housed in the College of
Arts and Humanities may be in hiring instructors that are qualified and available to teach the
course. American Sign Language has been attempted to be taught within ARHU as a foreign
language in the past, with instructors dropping out at the last minute and thus creating an
inconvenience to the university and students that signed up for the course. A remedy to this issue
is the increasing field of adjunct faculty to reduce the costs of hiring a full-time faculty member
to teach the course.

There has been a surge of adjuncts that are hired at universities due to lower budgets and not
enough full-time job positions available. The job outlook for these adjunct teachers is predicted
to grow 19% until 2022, according to the Room 241 Team (2015). These adjunct teachers are
required to have at least a Master’s degree and are hired to teach specific courses that the regular,
full-time school faculty may not be qualified to teach, or if these specific courses are high in
demand.

When considering hiring adjunct faculty to teach an introductory ASL class, costs are shown to
not actually increase with hiring adjuncts (Jaschik, 2017). This is due to the fact that they are
paid less and rarely receive benefits.

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From gathering this data, it is possible to assume that finding adjuncts that are willing to teach a
course would be difficult due to lack of benefits and low salaries but there has been a rising
increase in the field of adjunct teachers. This would be an economic benefit to the University of
Maryland, College Park to hire adjunct professors to teach the introductory ASL course, thus
leading to the benefits of students that would take the foreign language course as previously
discussed.

Diversity

When considering the values of the University of Maryland, College Park, there is one value that
states the deep commitment that the university has to diversity, inclusiveness and respect for
cultural differences. Implementing an introductory ASL class to the College of Arts and
Humanities will further dictate the value that UMD has in accepting and respecting diverse
cultures, and including everyone into the institution regardless of differences. This value is what
attracts so many students from all over the world to study at the University of Maryland, and the
diverse array of foreign languages will accommodate these students.

To match this value of diversity, it is important to have a wide variety of languages. When
housing a new foreign language within a university’s department, it is important to consider
student interest and involvement so that the course is filled past the minimum number of students
required. In the SurveyMonkey “Intro to ASL course” (2017), 76% of students said that they
hadn’t taken an ASL course before, and an overwhelming 84% of students stated that they would
take an Intro to American Sign Language class if it fulfilled their foreign language requirement.
There is a high interest for ASL to be a foreign language so that students aren’t limited to
common options such as Spanish or French. Giving students a wide variety of languages to
choose from in their mandatory foreign language requirement is beneficial to their learning
experience at UMD.

The global engagement requirement that Arts and Humanities students are expected to fulfill is
related to the value of diversity and inclusion of all cultures. In order to be ready for the “real
world” outside of college, students are recommended to study a foreign language in preparation.
Although the diverse nature of American Sign Language may be intimidating to some, the
SurveyMonkey (2017) suggests that 60% of students surveyed rated American Sign Language to
be the same or even easier than learning other foreign languages. This foreign language course
could challenge students and benefit them to explore deaf culture, and all the diversity benefits it
can bring.

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 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

American Sign Language is a great course to introduce to Arts and Humanities students when
they are required to learn a foreign language to complete their global engagement requirement.
Analysis of SurveyMonkey results from current ARHU students, professional literature, and
various benefits that students and the university can acquire leads to the following conclusions
and recommendations:

1. Implementing an introductory ASL course in the College of Arts and Humanities will
allow students to fulfill their foreign language requirement while increasing cognitive
thinking, cultural immersion, and career advancement.
2. Field trips planned at least once or twice depending on budget should be implemented
into the ASL course so that students can visit other colleges, such as Gallaudet
University, to enhance their cultural understanding of ASL and deaf culture and expand
their diversity experience that is recommended by the global engagement requirement.
3. Deaf events should also be frequently required within the ASL course so that students
may practice their ASL with members of the deaf community. This recommendation is
based on the student learning benefit of cultural immersion and diversity values.

On the basis of these findings, I recommend that the University of Maryland, College Park have
an introductory American Sign Language course that is housed in the College of Arts and
Humanities for students seeking a B.A., and searching for a foreign language to explore. The
benefits that students will acquire from learning this course will lead to increase in their student
learning process such as cognitive growth, career advancement, and cultural immersion. The
benefits that the university will acquire from this introductory ASL course will include lower
employment costs of hiring adjuncts and enhancing their diversity value to further their
accreditation. Student interest in this ASL course has been shown in a SurveyMonkey, and they
will be happy to hear that American Sign Language is an option in the list of foreign languages
to choose from.

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 APPENDIX

SurveyMonkey Questions:

Date: November 27, 2017

Sample size: 25 University of Maryland students (from Communication or Professional Writing
courses)

1. Do you consider American Sign Language as a foreign language?

2. Have you ever taken an American Sign Language course before?

3. Would you take an Intro to American Sign Language class if it fulfilled your foreign
language requirement?

4. How easy, compared to other foreign languages, would you consider American Sign
Language to learn? 1 = Difficult, 2 = Slightly Difficult, 3 = The Same, 4 = Slightly
Easier, 5 = Easy

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 WORKS CITED

Global Engagement Requirement. (2016). Retrieved November 27, 2017, from

https://www.arhu.umd.edu/undergraduate/globalengagement

Harrington, T. (2004, May) LibGuides. Sign Language. ASL: Ranking and number of users.
Retrieved November 27, 2017, from
http://libguides.gallaudet.edu/content.php?pid=114804&sid=991835

History of Gallaudet. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2017, from

http://www.gallaudet.edu/academic-catalog/about-gallaudet/history-of-gallaudet

Hitchcock, A. (n.d.). The Benefits of Bilingualism in Business. Retrieved November 28, 2017,
from http://daily.unitedlanguagegroup.com/stories/editorials/benefits-bilingualism-
business

Jaschik, S. (2017, January 5). When Colleges Rely on Adjuncts, Where Does the Money Go?
Retrieved November 28, 2017, from
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/05/study-looks-impact-adjunct-hiring-
college-spending-patterns

Kibler, A., & Philipose, S. (n.d.). ACTFL. Retrieved November 27, 2017, from
https://www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows/studies-supporting

Landis, D. (2017, August 14). Intern Blog: Dead Languages: Is Higher Education Ignoring
Foreign Language Requirements? Retrieved November 27, 2017, from
https://www.goacta.org/the_forum/dead-languages-is-higher-education-ignoring-foreign-
language-requirements

Marian, V., & Shook, A. (2012, October 31). The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual.
Retrieved November 28, 2017, from
http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/The_Cognitive_Benefits_of_Being_Bilingual/

Room 241 Team. (2015, September 1). How to Become an Adjunct Professor: Job, Education,
Salary. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from https://education.cu-
portland.edu/blog/teaching-careers/adjunct-professor/#employment

Saiz, A., & Zoido, E. (2002). The returns to speaking a second language (No. 02-16). Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

SurveyMonkey Inc. (2017, November 27). Intro to ASL course. Retrieved from
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-JFC99GWQ8/

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The Importance of Bilingual Education. (2016, March 25). Retrieved November 28, 2017, from
https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/importance-bilingual-education

University of Maryland, College Park. (n.d.). Vision, Mission, and Values [PDF].

U.S. Department of Labor. (2017, October 24). Interpreters and Translators. Retrieved
November 28, 2017, from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-
communication/interpreters-and-translators.htm