After the episode of the sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela memorial service, Thamsanqa Jantjie made it apparent to the world that learning the practices of sign language can be difficult.

Luckily for students at SIU wanting to learn American Sign Language, they will soon be able to minor in ASL and avoid such embarrassments.

The American Sign Language minor becomes available during the summer and is offered through the College of Liberal Arts.

Foreign languages and literatures lecturer Pamela Walker said the ASL program is undergoing changes by changing all four credit hour classes to three.

Walker, the only lecturer teaching ASL, has been teaching sign language at the university for nine years.

“It is going to allow me to teach four classes instead of three, and that’s how we’re adding the additional classes and making a minor with no new faculty,” she said.

Chancellor Rita Cheng said the program could add more faculty members if students show an interest in the minor. Walker said she anticipates it being a popular program as ASL is often a minor combined with a foreign language major.

Walker said while she can teach the classes herself, she would enjoy another faculty member but with the economy, another ASL lecturer would not be hired in the near future.

Walker is not the only one happy about this new minor. Her students are enthusiastic as well.

“The students that I have now are pretty excited,” she said. “Actually, some of them are ticked off because they’re graduating this year and are just going to miss it.”

Walker said she expects her waiting list for the class to double or triple, as a minor in ASL is much more valuable than just taking the courses.

The ASL minor is going to be 15 credits, which is lower than most universities’ requirements.

“They don’t have to take a lot, really, they just have to take four semesters of the language and four of the culture and literature,” she said. “Some schools have quite a bit more than that, but we’re doing what we can with one teacher.”

For the program to become a minor, it had to be approved by the Faculty Senate, the university’s administration and the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

“We were trying to get it passed this year and it didn’t make all the approval stages by the time the catalog came out. It had to be in the catalog,” Walker said.

Walker said while there is not an abundance of deaf people in southern Illinois, interpreters are still needed for the job.

“There’s kind of a conundrum because there aren’t so many deaf people, but there are enough that, at times, the need for interpreters exceeds what we have,” she said.

There are currently just nine deaf students on campus. The numbers have fluctuated over the years with 17 being the most in one semester.

Cheng said the minor is also great for retention for students with hearing disabilities.

“This is an important program, many people are hard of hearing,” she said. “Between nine and 22 out of 1,000 people have severe hearing or are deaf. We are a campus that prides ourselves with our historical connection to people with disabilities.”

Associate Professor of Interpreter Preparation at John A. Logan College, Paula Willig, said the community college confers associate in science degrees in ASL, deaf studies and an interpretation program. Students can choose to get certificates as well.

Willig said John A. Logan works closely with SIU so students can choose to take classes at either college, although Logan offers more programs.

“Our interpreter program is really over and above what SIU offers,” she said. “But we’ve had students that were over at SIU taking the courses transfer over to us and do the interpreting program because they fell in love with the language.”

SIU does not offer an interpreting program at this time. Willig said she is hoping SIU will become a viable place for students to transfer and work toward more in interpreting.

“What I would love to see is we have an educational interpreting online program that we started at the college several years back and offered for interpreters who’d work in the school systems,” she said. “I would love to see that (program) move to SIU and become the upper level course for a bachelor’s degree.”

Walker said she would be open to having a deaf studies and culture program at the university as well. Although more courses may be available in the future, she said sign language is as difficult to learn as any other.

Walker said numerous students sign up for her class because they think it will be easier than other languages, which is not always the case.

“One thing that might be better for them is that it’s visual and not auditory,” she said. “But on the flip side of that coin, it’s visual gestural and you have to do things with your face.”

Along with American Sign Language, the College of Liberal Arts is also adding an East Asian studies major.

Associate professor in foreign languages and literatures David Johnson, said the College of Liberal Arts has offered some Chinese and Japanese courses for many years but because of new changes, East Asian studies is now a major, taught by associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, Alan Kim.

“What we were shooting out to do was to make it not solely a language program,” Johnson said.