Supporting and Providing Access for Deaf Students in Signed Language Research

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This project supports the diversification of researchers who work on signed languages and their communities of users. Historically, the majority of signed language researchers have been hearing people, most of whom are adult learners of a signed language. However, there are few deaf and hard of hearing (hereafter deaf) signers among the ranks of signed language researchers. This project uses a mentorship model to provide a small group of deaf college and university students from throughout the United States with professional-development activities and support for attending the international Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR) conference. TISLR is the premier conference for signed language research in the world. The aim is to provide key opportunities for deaf students from the United States that will support their progression in graduate work and future involvement in the field of signed language research.The project will accomplish its goals in two key ways. First, deaf students who are chosen (via rigorous application process) to be part of pre- and post-conference mentorship activities will meet virtually with current deaf researchers, to discuss methods for engaging in academic research, presenting one’s findings at conferences, publishing the results of one’s work in scholarly journals, and engaging with the deaf community in order to share research findings and promote future recruitment of deaf students to the field. Second, deaf students will attend the TISLR conference (either in person or virtually), supported by American Sign Language-English interpretation services. The interpretation services are crucial because many conference presentations and activities will occur in (oral) English. Interpretation support will allow the deaf candidates supported by the project to access oral language and engage fully with the conference program and with other researchers in the field.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.