The American Sign Language Club is currently lobbying the University to offer American Sign Language as a course, and to ensure that the course would help to fulfill the language requirement.

"Our goal is to have the first semester have 10a, second semester have 20 and then the third semester have 10 and 30, just having it so that it fulfills a language requirement and in seeing what the interest is," said ASL Club President and Co-Founder Jaclyn Kellner '16 in an interview with the Justice.

According to Kellner, the club's goal is to at least have ASL fulfill the language requirement "because Brandeis doesn't like offering languages that don't fulfill the language requirement and students don't like taking languages that don't fulfill the language requirement."

Kellner also added that it would be "odd" to start learning a language and "not get to a level of good, solid conversation before you stop."

The ASL Club was formed and recognized by the Student Union last year, but at that point, according to Kellner, advocating for an ASL course was a potential goal, not the primary goal of the club at that time.

The ASL Club recently created a Qualtrics poll to gauge interest in the course, should it be offered in the future.

The survey, according to Co-Founder and the club's Class Coordinator Brittany Lerman '14, was posted to Facebook groups affiliated with Brandeis and was sent out to members of the club's listserv. Although the survey was sent to Student Union Secretary Sneha Walia '15 to include in the weekly email to the Brandeis community, according to Kellner, the survey did not make the deadline for Walia's most recent email. Kellner said that the poll would be open for "another week or so."

As of Sunday, 119 students who participated in the survey were in favor of Brandeis offering ASL classes, six replied "maybe" and six replied that they would not be in support.

However, when asked whether or not they would enroll, given that the course would count toward the foreign language requirement, 87 responded that they would, 25 responded that they might be interested and 10 responded that they would not be interested.

According to Kellner, creating a survey was not something the Brandeis administration told the ASL club to do, but is rather "one of the steps as to show that there's interest."

However, Kellner was unsure of how many students must express interest for the administration to consider offering ASL.
The officers have been working with Senior Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences for Undergraduate Education Elaine Wong.

Currently, students who are interested in taking ASL have traveled to Harvard University to take a class held on Sundays.
According to Kellner in an email to the Justice, Brandeis students pay a part of the fee, or about $15, to take the class, but it is discounted by the Student Union.

Transportation to the class is available through the Cambridge Shuttle Service and a BranVan funded by the Student Union. Approximately 20 Brandeis students are currently taking the class at Harvard, according to Kellner.

However, this option is not sufficient, according to Lerman. "I know that there are plenty of students on the Brandeis campus that would be interested in taking the Harvard ASL classes but it doesn't work in their schedule to go all the way to Harvard and take classes, so that's why having it at Brandeis would be very convenient so we do have a lot of support," said Lerman in an interview with the Justice.

Although the officers explained that there is no particular deadline, they expressed that their goal is to have the University offer ASL as a class by fall 2014. According to Kellner, all coordination and steps to plan the class would need to be completed by March in order for this to occur.

"[I'm] not sure how feasible that is at this point just because months keep going by, but the sooner the better," said Kellner.

Kellner described the process that the club must go through in order for the University to offer ASL as a course. First, a department under which the course would be listed needed to be decided.

According to Kellner, the Language and Linguistics program agreed that if there were an ASL course, it would fall under Linguistics.

Linguistics Chair Prof. James Pustejovsky (COSI) could not be reached for comment by press time.

The second step, Kellner said, is gauging interest, which is what the club is attempting to do through the Qualtrics poll.
Another step is writing a sample syllabus. Kellner said that she started to contact professors of beginning ASL at other universities in order to do so.

Lerman added that finding an adjunct professor would be another step.

"When we met with administration to talk about this, they were really supportive in seeing that apparently there's been (sic) ASL clubs in the past, and they would like to see ASL at Brandeis, however, if it were to be a professor, to my understanding, it would be an adjunct professor," Lerman said.

Lerman added that the club planned to work with administration to locate funding for an adjunct professor.

Finding the funding for a professor to teach the course is the main issue now, according to Wong. "I think that at the moment, it's unlikely to happen next year, unless funds from an outside donor are identified," Wong wrote in an email to the Justice.

Kellner said that the question remains as to whether or not the club is going to come up with part of the funding for a professor through grants or through fundraising, or whether the club will ask the University to take care of the funding "because there are a lot of classes that different departments want to have offered and they don't just hire new professors all the time," she said.

According to Wong, there are no current faculty members who have the time or expertise to teach ASL. "In order for a new instructor to be hired to teach an ASL course, a department or program has to request that such a course (or sequence of courses) be offered, and the university must then identify funds to pay for the new instructor," Wong wrote.

According to Kellnerm, the ASL club has not yet found any grants specifically intended to start ASL classes at universities.

However, according to both the ASL officers and Wong, administrators are in support of providing ASL courses.

"Speaking for myself, I think it would be wonderful if we had the resources to offer ASL for credit at Brandeis.  I believe that other members of the administration feel the same way," Wong wrote.