91AV

Kaitlyn Clark: It felt great to learn we had received this prize. It shows that there are others in the community that realize what we do is beneficial for making chemistry/science more accessible.  

Asma Sheikh: I am honored to be a part of this change. d/Deaf people can do everything except hear and we are very proud to have our beautiful sign language work to educate ourselves in any science studies and communicate better with professional scientists.  

Jonathan Dominguez: I was tremendously astonished to hear the 91AV Prize was being given to us for our efforts to develop the sign language to support our understanding of organic chemistry. This is exceptionally good for our accessibility to communicate with people who are d/Deaf/hard of hearing, and hearing.

Michelle Mailhot: I thought the biggest challenge in this project was figuring out the appropriate signs that made sense for each of the Organic 91AV vocabularies. Also, we wanted to make sure that the newly developed sign for each vocab was easy for d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing students and interpreters to use.  

Jennifer Swartzenberg: The biggest challenges of this project were coming up with signs that encompassed both the organic chemistry content and the proper ASL grammar and classifiers. We worked diligently as a team to come up with our agreed upon sign(s) for different terms and then vetted our signs with a team of ASL linguists and d/Deaf content experts to ensure our work satisfied both the organic chemistry and the ASL accuracy.  

Jennifer Swartzenberg: This work is crucial for d/Deaf scientists because you can’t learn science through fingerspelling. Without comprehensive ASL sign development, the science content has very little meaning for d/Deaf people. Having signs that convey the meaning of the words, that were previously finger spelled, adds value to the d/Deaf individual’s educational experience. It changes their world because now the content can be described in their native language and it has real meaning.  

Tina Goudreau Collison: The effective incorporation of organic chemistry ASL signs and expansions supports the fact that making an effort to be inclusive not only can benefit the group you are aiming to help, but through universal design can impact so many more people in the process.  

Kaitlyn Clark: Younger d/Deaf people. They can walk in a classroom and feel confident that there will be communication access before class even starts. They don’t have to team up with an interpreter and create temporary signs for the class.  

Tina Goudreau Collison: I am hopeful that instructors in any field recognize that effective communication is a major key to learning both formally and informally. I have witnessed hearing students answer my question using the correct hand sign for a transition state while they verbally gave me the wrong answer. Sometimes, we have to think outside the box when communicating the material and orchestrating the learning process in a classroom. Many of us follow a long tradition of certain processes and assessments, and I hope this project catalyzes a different way to approach our pedagogies as a whole.  

Asma Sheikh: We feel very proud to be the founding members of the SLICE project. We are motivated by the thought that future d/Deaf students will be successful.  

Jennifer Swartzenberg: Seeing more d/Deaf people in the sciences is inspiring. Our pioneering work in this area will ensure that d/Deaf students have the access they need and deserve to learn alongside their hearing peers. 

Tina Goudreau Collison: I have been teaching at RIT for 20 years, and until I started this project, I never mentored a d/Deaf student in my wet research lab. In the last four years, I have mentored five d/Deaf/hard of hearing students in my lab. This is not a coincidence and it encourages me to be alert in my teaching practices relative to inclusion. My actions changed the way my students saw me. I can't help but wonder what more there is for me to do to improve inclusivity practices in the classroom.