The American Sign Language club has been working toward creating a welcoming space for people to practice and learn ASL on campus since its inception in 2023. A large part of achieving their goal is reintroducing ASL courses to the MSU curriculum. 

This summer, ASL classes will be offered for the first time since 2014 as a direct result of efforts made by the ASL club. 

Founder Ellyn Skodack started the club after she noticed a lack of space for students to practice and learn ASL on campus. Skodack’s experiences in her field of study, speech pathology, sparked her interest in the language. 

“I met a really sweet little girl that I was teaching, and she was hard of hearing and had a cochlear implant, and she was using sign language with me,” Skodack said. “And I was like ‘Oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing. I don’t know how to use this and I’m going to be a speech therapist.’ That was kind of like my inspiration moment.”

Since it began, the ASL club has gained nearly 200 members. The increase in size of the community in such a short amount of time proved there was interest to those in charge of the MSU curriculum.

“I just kind of expected that, with there being a community of people who are interested in sign language, that it would be enough anecdotal evidence for the university to be impressed and see a lot of people who are interested,” Skodack said. 

In late September 2023, Skodack and her sister led letter-writing efforts within the club. They reached out to various department heads to gain support from faculty and strongly encouraged the addition of ASL courses to the curriculum. 

They emphasized that MSU is the only school left in the Big 10 Conference that does not offer ASL courses as a permanent part of their curriculum. 

Skodack says that she was able to find a curriculum for ASL courses through a courseshare program held by the Big 10 Academic Alliance that allows schools in the Big 10 to share curriculums for specialized courses. 

“The excuse that it’s too much work is really not valid because, I mean we found the curriculum, and we’re undergrad students with little to no connections or experience,” Skodack said. “It’s time to step up, MSU.”

One faculty member who took notice of their efforts was professor Charlene Polio. Polio is currently serving as interim chair of the linguistics department. 

“Knowledge of any language opens up the number of people that you can connect with,” Polio said. “Studying a new language teaches you about linguistic diversity, and it helps you understand what it’s like to try to communicate in a language that you may not be fluent in.”

A lot of their efforts were focused on proving to the university that students had an interest in an ASL program.

“I realized that if we could fill a course in the summer, we could offer it,” Polio said. “So I thought that would be a good way to gauge interest.”

MSU’s lack of ASL courses was a disappointing realization for many students who are hard of hearing. One of these students is the club’s current president Nina Blum. 

“It’s about time to have sign language classes,” Blum said. “LCC has been on it. They have ASL classes. They have the interpreters training program, you know. We were just waiting on MSU, you know. World-class university, where’s our sign language classes at?”

Club members expect that ASL courses will increase the acceptance and awareness of the deaf community on campus. For Blum, being surrounded by peers who knew basic sign language was an encouraging part of learning. 

“I didn’t really take it seriously until high school because my high school had some classes,” Blum said. “It was really nice when my peers had learned more sign with me. That was really nice. And I think the same effect could be seen soon, hopefully, here at MSU.”

Audrey Deising, the club’s outreach chair, was born hard of hearing and didn’t learn sign language until coming to college.

“I just always grew up reading captions and reading lips as well but never learned sign,” Deising said. “I knew when I got to college, I knew I wanted to help not only the children I’ll be working with as a pediatric audiologist, but also another skill for myself so I don’t have to rely on other things.”

Deising encourages people to get involved as it could help them in their careers. 

“I feel like every single job could benefit from ASL,” Deising said. 

Club vice president Lily Gabos agrees, stating that ASL could give you a boost in the job market. 

“It looks great on your resume also, if you’re learning ASL or if you’re in the club,” Gabos said. 

Club social media chair Emma Scholz learned ASL to better communicate with customers while working in her hometown grocery store. 

“A lot of deaf or hard of hearing people would come in, especially during COVID-19, and they had masks on and everybody had a mask on so it was hard,” Scholz said. 

The club members agree that the greatest benefit to learning ASL is the sense of unity and understanding that it brings by opening up the possibilities for communication with new people. 

Gabos gained an interest in ASL when she began getting closer to her best friend’s little sister, Charlotte, who is completely deaf. 

“Even though she can’t communicate with me and I can’t communicate with her in English, I really wanted to learn her language so I could communicate with her,” Gabos said.

Taking this step brought Gabos closer to Charlotte and her whole family. 

This summer, ASL classes will be held under the course names LL 151 and LL 152, with LL 151 beginning May 12 and LL 152 beginning July 1. They each include one online synchronous hour and three asynchronous hours and are available for enrollment now. 

Each course requires a minimum of 15 students to enroll for the classes to be offered in the fall. 

The ASL club encourages anyone interested to get involved and show their support. 

“We’re hoping to grow the club and obviously, grow the classes,” Gabos said. “We’d love to see new faces here,” Gabos said.