More college students sign up for sign language

"It's an interesting, different language," says Cathy Quenin, a speech and language pathologist at Nazareth College in Rochester. "Even if people don't have direct contact [with the deaf community], they are peripherally aware. For years, students were asking for ASL to be offered here."

Three years ago, New York State changed its "foreign language" requirement to study of "a language other than English." Nazareth began offering ASL right away. It had to double its courses the next year. Similarly, when Dr. Ball taught at Brigham Young University in the 1990s, she says, they offered just two or three classes to about 75 students. Today more than 800 students study ASL there each semester.

One of the popular misconceptions about ASL is that people don't have to work as hard to learn it as they do, say, French or Mandarin. Bethany Campbell bristles a bit at the suggestion: "Just like English, I'm constantly learning. I'm a junior, and there's so much more still to learn."

William Woods began its program in 1990, and Dr. Ball says that some students who enroll in the university specifically for the degree underestimate how difficult it will be. "ASL 1 is very large, ASL 2 is a little smaller," she notes. "Then the interpretive classes get even smaller."

For those who stick with it, a senior-year internship provides practical training. Students work in a variety of settings, such as corporate events, schools, concerts, or even a WWE wrestling match, as one student did this year.

A deaf culture course is also mandatory to understand the two different perceptions of deaf people, says Ball. "One is pathological - deaf people are disabled, they need to be fixed with cochlear implants to be like us. A cultural view looks at the group's own norms, its language. The heart of any culture is its language."

At Washington, D.C.'s Gallaudet University - traditionally for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergrads - ASL is the medium of instruction.

Gallaudet is now accepting applications from hearing students fluent in ASL: Hearing Undergraduate Students or HUGS, as they're known on campus. Provost Jane Fernandes says that HUGS' enrollment in the fall will be about 5 percent.

HUGS may have a deaf family member, but they're also likely to have learned ASL in high school. And although some become interpreters - the university will begin offering its own BA program in 2005 - most HUGS simply wish to work with deaf populations in their chosen profession.

For students who want to learn ASL quickly, a popular summer intensive program is available. Unlike most programs that require overseas travel for true immersion, no passport is necessary. As Dr. Fernandes says, "You don't need to go to Japan to practice."

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