American Sign Language Program Administrators on the Status of American Sign Language Programs in Higher Education

Abstract

The status of American Sign Language (ASL) has gained academic acceptance in higher education confirmed primarily by hearing institutional members. At the time of this writing, there were no studies concerning support for ASL faculty members by program administrators who are Deaf. There were few documented studies on Deaf faculty members and administrators addressing audism in higher education. The purpose of this study was to examine the status of ASL programs in institutions of higher education. This ethnographic study surveyed ASL program administrators who were Deaf concerning the status of ASL, management of ASL faculty members, and audism in higher education. The methodological assumption was Deaf people shared collective experiences individually. A demographics survey was disseminated in two professional organizations and in social media that recruited seven interviewees for two rounds of recorded interviews. HyperRESEARCH was used to analyze qualitative data. The results confirmed the status of ASL in higher education, administrative support was provided to ASL faculty members, and audism has been addressed by Deaf faculty members who doubled as ASL program administrators. Recommendations for further research included revisiting the definition of ASL, a survey of ASL faculty members with a special focus of those belonging to marginalized populations, hearing people teaching ASL, and empirical studies of audism in higher education.