Deaf studies minor to be cut after Fall 2025

Ithaca College’s Deaf studies minor has been put on an administrative pause and is currently not accepting more students for the foreseeable future. The three ASL instructors at the college are being laid off after the Fall 2025 semester. According to professors in the program, this minor has proven itself popular among students in and out of the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Department, where the program is housed.

Lynne Hewitt, professor and chair of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, said the department is making sure all students who are already enrolled will be able to complete the minor in Fall 2025. As of April 7, she said all students who started taking classes in the program but were unable to formally declare the minor before it went on pause, can have their request accommodated.

There are about 31 seniors, 14 juniors, eight sophomores and two first-year students enrolled in the minor in Spring 2025.

Hewitt said that part of the college’s plan for balancing the budget involves scrutinizing its staffing and programs, which they are asked to do every year. She said they were really asked to look at staffing their courses with full-time faculty. Hewitt said the Deaf studies minor is staffed with three experts in American Sign Language and Deaf studies who are all part-time lecturers. The fact that they are all part-time faculty came into consideration when discussing the department’s staff and programs around January 2025.

On April 3, President La Jerne Cornish sent out an email to the campus community as part of an Administrative Review Update. In the email, she wrote that the college has been conducting a detailed analysis over the past six months to identify opportunities that could drive financial improvement. She also wrote that the specific divisional, departmental and supervisory levels will communicate with their students and faculty any budgetary decisions pertaining to their areas.

Lisa Witchey, instructor for ASL, said via email that she and her colleagues were officially informed in March that there was a small chance there would be classes for the minor in Spring 2026.

“I knew the college was facing budgetary issues, but never did I think the organizational restructuring would include the Deaf Minor,” Witchey said via email. “There are not many colleges that offer Deaf Minor which makes Ithaca College unique in that regard. … Understandably, I was quite shocked and dare I say in mourning. I could not foresee my 22-year career not coming to an end on my terms.”

Hewitt said the decision to pause the Deaf studies minor was solely financial and that they were not the only department being asked to scrutinize their staff.

“All the departments are being asked to think about [their staff and programs] in terms of what we have committed to,” Hewitt said. “We believe that Deaf studies is a very important thing [and] all of us here, we’ve dedicated our careers to helping people with disabilities and fighting ableism. So we believe in the value of it. … we want more studies of disabilities if we had our way.

Jim Meyers, instructor for ASL, teaches some of the intro-level ASL classes and said he and the other professors were not involved in the conversation to pause the program, so it was surprising.

“It happened that our department chair came in and just kind of mentioned … there’s decisions that have been made to both … the ASL program as well as the Deaf studies minor,” Meyers said. “It was mentioned very gently, I will be honest about that. We’ve had great support from that department, but I had no idea that it was coming prior to that.”

Meyers said part of the surprise stemmed from the fact that the ASL classes the college offers fill up quickly. The American Sign Language Teachers Association suggests limiting class size for an introductory foreign language class to 12. Meyers and Kip Opperman, instructor for ASL, both said their ASL classes are always full with up to 20 students. Opperman said that while 20 is the usual cap, sometimes he will go over.

“Deaf people are expected to acquiesce to the majority hearing culture by learning how to speak,” Opperman said. “So it’s great that [my classes have been] … full since I’ve been [teaching here]; we’ve never had to go out recruiting students. There is an interest — a significant interest — in the hearing population of Ithaca College to learn.”

Meyers said that he had not realized so many of his students did not know about the administrative pause, and that he had to make an announcement in his classes to make everyone aware.

“It’s disappointing,” Meyers said. “[The program has] gotten stronger over time. We’ve had a chance to get input from students of how it’s working overtime. … We felt like we were peaking or at a good stage of where the minor was.”

Sophomore Emily Donahue said she sent in her request for a Deaf studies minor a week before she found out about the administrative pause. She said that knowing ASL sets people apart in the world of communications, which is part of the appeal for her to learn it. She said it will be challenging to outsource resources to learn.

“[With] the Deaf gatherings that we do, the feedback we’ve gotten from Deaf people that come to our gatherings [has been that] it’s very important to them,” Donahue said. “So it’s also like a whole piece of awareness that they’re losing and students are losing opportunity and professors are losing opportunities.”

Brenda Schertz, a Deaf senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University, said it is unfortunate that Ithaca College has decided to pause their Deaf studies minor and ASL classes. Schertz said that the college’s decision to pause ASL courses at a time when they are popular is questionable.

“The Deaf community may be small in Ithaca, but that should not be a deciding factor,” Schertz said via email. “Graduates with this minor will find that knowing ASL is likely to enhance their employment prospects; they will know more about developing policies that concerning Deaf people and how to make workplaces more accessible for Deaf people.”

Witchey said that each semester, ASL II classes host ASL Gatherings for ASL I students. They practice their language skills in small groups and Deaf community members are invited to lead a question and answer session.

“I wanted to share this vibrant and rich language with others,” Witchey said via email. “It’s a lot of fun to learn ASL, building a real sense of connection and community with the Deaf. In general, it boosts communication skills, enhanced cognitive abilities [and] opportunities to learn about a new culture.”

Senior McKenna Deignan, who completed the Deaf studies minor in her junior year, is the president of IC’s iSign, a student-run organization devoted to learning ASL and building awareness of Deaf culture. She said students in the club are hoping that with the loss of ASL classes, their attendance outcome will improve. Deignan said she became interested in the language in high school when she met a deaf child who she could not understand.

“I had no idea what she was talking about, absolutely no clue,” Deignan said. “And I felt really bad as a person that I could not communicate with her, and it wasn’t her fault, it was mine. So from that point on, I started teaching myself. … Just her face the next time I showed up — you could tell her parents were so grateful.”

The Deaf studies minor includes learning the signs, grammar and distinctly different syntax of ASL along with the cultural aspects of the community. In Opperman’s intro-level ASL courses, the first hour is spent with no speaking. Students learn about each other and their professor through the visual language — learning to dismantle the societal norm that speaking is the only way to communicate. Donahue said the courses give students a chance to understand the cultural ties to the language.

“DEI is no longer enforced as much as it was under the new presidential administration,” Donahue said. “You’re cutting out a program that is very much about inclusivity and making a minority group of people feel taught about.”

Hewitt said the school had dialogues about pausing the minor earlier because they wanted to look at the curriculum and student feedback to make sure the courses were as contemporary as they could be. She said the ASL instructors were alerted of the decision as soon as she was given the final information. While there is no current plan to reinstate the program, Hewitt said that being able to bring some version of the minor back in the future is a goal of hers.

“We’ll miss [the lecturers] very much,” Hewitt said. “Kip is always a beam of sunshine. It has been a pleasure working with them.”

Deignan said the pausing of the program has been hard on some of the professors and that iSign as a club has been trying to express its gratitude for them. Despite the sadness surrounding the situation, Witchey said that the decision of which staff to let go must have been an agonizing decision for the department.

“The college is losing over 60 years of experience amongst the three ASL Instructors,” Witchey said via email. “My mind wanders in thinking how many more years are being lost in all the cuts campus-wide. Recognition of our careers, in some way, would end my time here on a positive note.”