Pilot ASL program to be offered in Spring 2018

Yale will offer two undergraduate courses next semester in American Sign Language — the first to be offered for course credit.

The new program, which will operate in a pilot stage until spring 2019, will be offered by the Department of Linguistics and begin with Level 1 and Level 2 courses next semester, according to the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies Raffaella Zanuttini. The courses will be taught by Jessica Tanner, who currently teaches ASL courses as part of the University’s Directed Independent Language Study program, the only option that currently exists for students wishing to learn ASL at Yale. Next fall, the linguistics department will appoint a full-time lector who will teach Level 1 and Level 3 ASL courses. If there is sufficient interest the offerings will continue in subsequent years, with five courses offered each year.

The program was approved by the Language Study Committee in April and by Yale’s Teaching Resource Advisory Committee in September, according to Zanuttini.