American Sign Language gets hands-down approval
As a regular contributor to UCLA’s student newspaper, Asad Ramzanali was intrigued when a fellow student mentioned an appetite on campus for instruction in American Sign Language (ASL).
"It was something I never thought of, but I thought it might make for a good piece," recalled the economics major, who was always looking for thought-provoking topics to write about.
American Sign Language has risen to become the fourth most frequently studied foreign language taught on U.S. college campuses.
So in October of last year Ramzanali wrote a passionate Daily Bruin column urging university administrators to offer ASL and to allow the instruction to count toward the university’s foreign language requirement for undergraduates.
He further elaborated on his idea in a 13-page report, complete with tables and pie charts, that he emailed to Tim Stowell, who at the time was dean of the Humanities Division within the College of Letters and Science. Foreign language instruction falls under the division.
Of the 50 languages taught at UCLA, Ramzanali pointed in his report, 12 were spoken by fewer than 100,000 people; ASL would also fit in that category. He also provided the nationwide totals for student enrollment for the 14 most commonly taught languages in U.S. institutions of higher learning between 1968 and 2009. ASL ranked fourth behind Spanish, German and French as the most frequently studied language on U.S. college campuses, Ramzanali found. He also compiled a page-long list of email addresses for UCLA students who had expressed an interest in studying ASL.
"He did this amazing research project," recalled Stowell, who has since returned to his faculty position in linguistics. "He basically assembled all kinds of arguments based on MLA (Modern Language Association) statistics. Did you know that ASL is the fourth most popular non-English language instruction in terms of enrollments nationwide? I didn’t know that before I read (Ramzanali’s report)."
Ramzanali even enlisted friends to survey fellow undergraduates via Facebook, an undertaking that showed that 82% of responders felt UCLA should offer ASL, and 56% said they would take ASL if it were offered.
As a student columnist on the Daily Bruin, Asad Ramzanali proposed that UCLA offer courses in American Sign Language. He later submitted a more detailed, formal report to the dean of humanities.
Last week Ramzanali’s efforts paid off. After careful and extensive study of the proposal by three faculty oversight committees, the final review, by an Academic Senate panel, resulted in unanimous approval to institute ASL instruction at UCLA.
Beginning in January, undergraduates may satisfy the College’s foreign language requirement with ASL. The Linguistics Department plans to begin offering ASL as early as this summer after receiving seed funding from Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Christine Littleton, Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Judith Smith and interim Humanities Dean David Schaberg, who succeeded Stowell last August. As with all foreign language programs on campus, ASL coursework can count toward the three quarters of foreign language instruction required of most UCLA undergraduates. A symposium on ASL is being planned for sometime next year.
"We were pretty stoked to hear the news," said Ramzanali, who graduated last June.
After two years, the program will be evaluated to see if interest has met expectations. Supporters hope the pilot program will be the first step toward establishing a minor in deaf studies at UCLA. UCLA already offers a minor in disability studies.
In introducing instruction in sign language, UCLA is joining a growing trend. Enrollment in ASL courses nationwide has jumped 800 percent since 1998.
ASL instruction and deaf studies are offered at many universities around the country, with major programs at the universities of Washington, Arizona, Iowa, Texas, Minnesota and UC San Diego. At UCSD and at the University of Washington, beginning ASL courses are so popular that demand often outstrips capacity. More than 200 students each year join wait lists for the courses at these schools.
"It wasn’t offered more than a dozen years ago, but now it’s one of the fasting growing languages among university students," Ramzanali said of ASL. "Students either know someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, or want to work with the deaf or hard of hearing. So the demand is there."
Yet, over the years, ASL has not enjoyed the same stature as foreign languages, possibly due to a misconception that it is based on oral language, similar to mime, and therefore cannot convey the same subtleties and complex meaning that spoken languages do. Scholars, however, increasingly challenge this point of view.
"There’s no debate among linguists," Stowell said. "It’s as rich and complex as any other human language."
Among UCLA undergraduates, interest in deaf culture appears to be growing. Last year, a group of students formed HEARD (Humans Expanding Awareness Regarding Deafness) with the goal of studying the culture and language of deaf Americans. Some 200 students have signed up to be on the group’s email list, and more than 40 students attended the first meeting, according to Moses Sumney, the organization’s president.
Additionally, students with hearing difficulties have recently risen to leadership positions in the student body. Nick Matthews, the senior who is captain of UCLA’s debate team, has a hearing impediment. Derrick Coleman, a senior running back on UCLA’s football team, also wears hearing aids.
Over the summer, Lucy Blackmar, an assistant vice provost of undergraduate initiatives, and Kyle McJunkin, the college’s director of curriculum coordination and operations, visited UCSD to study its ASL program. They also met with UCSD Communications Professor Carol Padden, a noted authority on deaf studies and a MacArthur grant winner who has written extensively on topics dealing with deaf culture and sign language.
Buoyed by Blackmar’s and McJunkin’s findings, UCLA’s linguistics faculty voted in early October to unanimously support plans to institute ASL instruction, and they filed a formal proposal with the College’s Faculty Executive Committee (FEC), citing a number of points made by Ramzanali.
The FEC approved the proposal on Nov. 18 and forwarded it to the Curriculum Committee of the Undergraduate Council of the Academy Senate, which approved the proposal Nov. 22. The Undergraduate Council, which is the final authority on the matter, approved the proposal at its Dec. 9 meeting.
Just over a year has passed since Ramzanali’s original column appeared in the Daily Bruin.
"During the past 40 years, the study of sign language and deaf communities has grown in a number of academic disciplines, including Linguistics, Communication Studies, History, Cognitive Science, and Disability Studies," the proposal states. "This appeal grows from the recognition that American Sign Language … is now recognized by linguists as a natural language, and it has a rich cultural heritage and a large active speech community."
Now employed by Intuit in Northern California, Ramzanali said via email that he modeled his appeal to Stowell on business plans that he learned to develop while active in the UCLA Global Business Brigade, a nonprofit group that mobilizes student and professional volunteers to improve the quality of life for communities in developing countries.
Ramzanali also learned something about the university.
"A lot of people get the perception that UCLA is too bureaucratic and that it can’t change. But I don’t believe it’s true," he said. "The bureaucracy can be frustrating, but (administrators are) willing to talk to you, to respond to you."
