NEW AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE COURSES AND PROGRAMS

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s Office for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing, over 1 million Pennsylvanians have hearing loss. Holy Family students have been developing new language skills to help communicate with that population in the American Sign Language I and American Sign Language II courses, which launched in Fall 2022 in the School of Arts & Sciences. Both courses are taught by Larisa Yanez , who graduated from The College of New Jersey with a Master of Arts degree in Teaching, Education of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing. For her first several years as an educator, Yanez worked exclusively with Deaf children. She later became ASL Teaching Certified.

Yanez points out that learning ASL yields immediate practical usage. “There are many reasons why students should consider taking an ASL course,” says Yanez. “Philadelphia has a large Deaf population. I’ve had students tell me while taking my course that they’ve encountered Deaf individuals at their jobs, like one of my students who worked at Wawa. People with other disabilities also use sign language to communicate. For example, my mother, who is a speech therapist, uses sign language to help communicate with children with autism. It is also important for accessibility, equity, and raising awareness for different issues involving the Deaf community.”

While ASL is used widely in education, Yanez notes that her students in the School of Nursing & Health Sciences have also found that learning ASL could offer an important professional advantage. “I love how many nursing students are currently in my class. Many people don’t realize that there are different perspectives on hearing loss. There is the medical model that says, ‘We need to fix this,’ that assists individuals with cochlear implants, hearing aids, and other devices as well as speech therapy. However, hearing loss is not looked at as a disability in many situations and instead is seen as more of a cultural difference. Having that cultural perspective and understanding as well as interpreters within the medical setting is important and can help bridge barriers, especially in high-stress situations in hospitals.”

“There are a lot of reasons why students should consider taking an ASL course. Philadelphia has a large Deaf population. I’ve had students tell me while taking my course that they’ve encountered Deaf individuals at their jobs.

Yanez also shares that many of her students have found that learning ASL is a valuable life skill even outside of professional settings. “My students have said that outside of class when they see each other at a distance or through a window they’ve been able to communicate, or they have used ASL to communicate from a distance at a concert or a loud party,” she explains. “Even the ASL that they learned in a short amount of time has been useful to them in situations that you might not think of. You don’t need to travel to use this particular language skill – you can use ASL in one setting or another every day.”

In addition to the new ASL courses, Holy Family has recently featured programming including ASL. On March 28, the University hosted a Distinguished Writers Series featuring Sara Nović, author of The New York Times Bestseller True Biz Nović is an author and Deaf rights activist, and True Bi z features a Deaf protagonist and other characters who have hearing loss.

On April 17, Kentrell Martin, the creator and author of the Shelly’s Adventures book series, Shelly’s Adventure Network videos, and other materials for families and educators interested in learning ASL, visited the Campus Library and read to students in the Alpha House Nursery, Pre-K, and Kindergarten program.

Faculty Briefs

Academic Grants

Jill Swirsky, Ph.D. was awarded a $5,000 grant from the Association for Psychological Science for her proposal “Assessing Student and Faculty Outcomes of Themed Courses.”

Publications

Roger Gee, Ph.D. published the chapter “Searching for frequent words for pronunciation activities” in Teaching English with Corpora

(Routledge) and coauthored the paper Estudiantes chilenos y norteamericanos en un proyecto de entrevistas en el idioma inglés /Chilean and American students in an interview project in English in DUCERE.

Other Maria Agnew, Ph.D., and the School of Education collaborated with students from Nazareth Academy High School who are interested in careers in education to host a holiday event, a simulated sensory trip to the North Pole, for Alpha House students. The event was funded by a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Brian Berry, Ph.D., and Tiffany Watson, D’17 were honored by the Journal of Special Education Technology for “Using Classroom Clickers to Increase Academic Engagement for Elementary School–Aged Students with

Disabilities,” which was selected by the publication as its Research Article of the Year for 2022.

Gerry FitzpatrickDoria ’85, Ed.D. presented on ways to enact the Culturally Relevant & Sustaining Education Competencies

(CRSE) at the 8th Annual National Field Experience Conference (NFEC) at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO (April 2023).

Margaret Harkins, DNP, MBE, MSN, GNP-BC, RN-BC, dean of the School of Nursing & Health Sciences, and Michelle Murphy-Rozanski, Ph.D., CRNP-FNP, RN, vice dean for Health Sciences, are serving on the advisory committee for Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accreditation for the Nurse Residency Program at Jefferson Health NE and Mercy Home Health (Trinity Health at Home System).