Learning in a classroom, talking with colleagues, consulting with a medical provider, speaking with a lawyer about a will, calling a family member on their birthday, participating in community events. Those are all things that deaf people, like everyone, need to do, and in a hearing person’s world.

The PID curriculum isn’t only about developing professional-level ASL skills but also about becoming familiar with the deaf or hard of hearing person’s experience, and the nuances within the Deaf community.

The first groundbreaking thought: Deafness is not a disability; it’s a culture and community.

“American Sign Language is the core,” says Dr. Claudia M. Pagliaro, director of the K-12 licensure track. “Our philosophy in PID is based in that culture and community and language.”

A second surprise for many people is that ASL doesn’t have the same structure as English. Although it is the only language that lends itself to simultaneous interpretation because of its manual mode, it doesn’t translate to English word-for-word, the same as with French, Russian, and many other languages.

A third revelation is that deaf or hard of hearing people’s experiences with American Sign Language and English are entirely unique. Graduates of UNCG’s program strive to work with the deaf or hard of hearing in a way that fits their needs.

“It’s important people trust deaf people to know what’s best for them,” explains Matt Bacarri ’14, staff interpreter for Greensboro nonprofit Communication Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. “ASL may or may not be someone’s first language. Writing in English may work for some but not others. Lip reading may work for some people and not others. We have to understand that everyone is different, and the situations vary widely.”

Communication, far and wide

The students who graduate from the Interpreter Preparation program are prepared to take the national certification and provide services throughout the nation. They are at doctors’ appointments, educational settings, clients’ places of employments, large performances, and ceremonies. Relay service interpreters also help people remotely on the phone, with everything from ordering a pizza to talking to their child’s health care providers to calling their mothers on Mother’s Day.

From all accounts, ASL interpreting is tremendously challenging work.

“Interpreters have to learn how to manage incoming information, how to process that information, and how to put it out in ASL,” explains PID director and clinical professor Sam Parker.

“Not only is it that you’re working with two different languages that are very different and distinct from each other, but you’re also the third person in sometimes very intimate or private situations,” adds Bacarri. “We need to be aware of our personal biases and the deaf person’s biases and how that may affect the communication.”

Latoya Jordan ’06 is a CODA, a child of a deaf adult. American Sign Language is her first language, so she is a native signer.  As a freelance interpreter, she has performed interpreting services for the North Carolina Division of Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, within university settings, for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service, for film productions, funeral services, medical appointments, formal ceremonies, and at national music festivals, such as the National Folk Festival and Bonnaroo, often alongside other Spartans who graduated from the PID Interpreter Preparation program.

“The idea of ’interpreting’ has been around forever but as a profession, it is fairly new,” says Jordan. “Our country’s understanding of civil rights and its citizen’s needs for accommodations and laws to protect them helped establish and provide official recognition for the need of legally certified interpreters.”

While Jordan may be most visible to the public when interpreting for public events, her work behind closed doors she cites as more significant in terms of impact.

“99 percent of the assignments that interpreters accept are confidential in manner," she says. "One percent of the time you may see us doing platform work, where we are on stage interpreting. But I am successful in my profession every time I provide courteous, accurate interpretation, whether it was the assignment where I interpreted for President Barack Obama or when I hold the hand of a patient who has just found out they have cancer.”

In 2016, Jenese Portee ’06 became the first-ever staff sign language interpreter for the Peace Corps, providing training and consultation at the office headquarters in D.C. and throughout the world. She also put her skills to use signing for musical artist Pink at the Grammy awards in 2018.

“Every word that comes out of your mouth has to be received, thought about, organized, and shared into sign language in a split second. And the people who communicate via sign language are as unique as anyone else,” says Portee.

Teachers ensure access

Graduates of the K-12 Deaf and Hard of Hearing Teacher Licensure program work locally ‒ at Kiser Middle School, for example ‒ across the state, and across state lines, such as at the Virginia School for the Deaf. Those graduates are not only fluent in American Sign Language upon graduation but are in tune with the learning variations that come into play when working with deaf or hard of hearing students.

“A deaf learner has a unique perspective on the world, intaking the world differently, organizing cognitively and linguistically differently than a hearing person. Our students are learning to take that perspective and understand what that deaf student brings to the classroom and how to direct that student’s progress,” says Pagliaro. “We believe that success starts when people have full access to a complete language as early as possible.”

Morgan Lavey ’17, who came to the PID K-12 program from Minnesota, completed her teaching internship at the North Carolina School for the Deaf in Morganton, and now works for the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind. She teaches English in grades six through 12, but her students may be as old as 21. Among other subjects, she teaches independent living skills to young adults.

“Being able to connect with the students personally and understand them is the best way to approach education. This is especially true within deaf education,” says Lavey.

She credits the mentorship she found in UNCG’s PID program as the source of her expertise in navigating those variations.

“These professors love building up the next generation of skilled, creative, and qualified teachers to go out and change the face of Deaf Education. My professors taught me that this profession is extremely valuable and is in desperate need of qualified professionals. They taught me that I am capable of impacting every student I encounter.”

Advocates serve

Graduates of the Advocacy Services program are prepared to work in deaf and hard of hearing service centers – nonprofit, for profit, or state agency-operated – that offer everything from interpreting at medical appointments to legal assistance to live captioning in college classes or at board meetings. Many alumni pursue graduate degrees in specialized careers working with the deaf and hard of hearing, such as master’s degrees in rehabilitation counseling and in clinical social work. But while they are in the program, they work with director of Greensboro’s Communication Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (CSDHH), Kelle Owens, who teaches the UNCG internship course and coordinates PID internships, many of them at CSDHH.

Paige Sprinkle ’12, ’14 came to the program after first earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UNCG in 2012. In the PID advocacy track she studied the many implications of the Americans with Disabilities Act, knowing what situations the law applies to and how. Her internship at CSDHH showed her the type of work she wanted to be doing. Now as the program coordinator there she provides direct client services. She is passionate about helping to promote an equal playing field for deaf people in all parts of life. She describes one of her most gratifying moments as hearing from a UNCG student, after receiving captioning services: Finally, I can do this, what I knew I was capable of the entire time.

“Knowing that student’s whole world had changed for the better,” she says, “I realized I could do this work for a very long time.”

Maddie Driggers ’16, a graduate of the Interpreter Preparation program, works alongside Sprinkle and Bacarri at CSDHH, as the interpreter coordinator. She makes interpreting appointments for more than 28,000 hours of services annually, and she also provides interpreting herself.

“Being able to go to an appointment and provide equal access for both people, to each other, and to be the conduit for that – that’s rewarding,” says Driggers. “It’s rewarding to be a part of so many people’s lives.

CSDHH also hosts events with the Deaf community and offers ASL classes to the hearing community.

Greater reach

UNCG currently has a “two-plus” articulation agreement with five community colleges in North Carolina. This agreement means that students from five community colleges can smoothly enter the interpreting program and become licensed interpreters. This accelerated pathway to ASL interpreting certification helps these students enter the workforce sooner, in a career that has a critical need and direct impact in their communities.

Whether working in education, business settings, public events, for state agencies, or in personal contexts, PID graduates value the mentorship and academic community they find at UNCG, and subsequent professional communities they create. Those connections lead them to careers that allow them to make a tremendous impact for deaf people and the world at large.

“The Professions in Deafness program is so much more than just baseline knowledge,” says Matt. “It prepared us to navigate different situations and to continue improving. It’s a small group of students and teachers – it really does become very close-knit. All the professors helped us keep front-of-mind how important the work we do is.”

A minor with impact

ASL is also part of UNCG curriculum and campus culture through the UNCG College of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, it was formally accepted by UNCG to satisfy foreign language requirements and was offered as a minor through the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (LLC). Each semester, 300-400 students are enrolled in courses that are taught by LLC and PID faculty.

“It’s gratifying when the students finally get it all together with facial expressions and grammatical structures,” says LLC senior lecturer Karen DeNaples. She enjoys seeing them participate in ASL social events and learning about ways they have used sign language in real-world situations.

“They’re so excited to come in and tell me they helped a deaf person at work or out in the world. Even though they’re not studying to be interpreters, knowing they use what they learned in the class is very gratifying.”

"Service" has been UNCG’s motto since 1893 when the school’s first alumnae formed the Alumnae Fellowship. Service to the community and the state of North Carolina has played a constant role in UNCG’s mission, from its founding through today.

Archival photography and text courtesy of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.