Utah State University to close their Bi-Bi Masters Program

On February 2, the Utah State University (USU) announced that they would be suspending and phasing out their bilingual-bicultural (Bi-Bi) track for Masters in the Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education Department. The goal of the program is to train students to become teachers of Deaf children using American Sign Language. This program has been running for about 30 years. The current group of students for the Bi-Bi Masters program will graduate in Spring 2023 then that will be the last group.

USU will continue to provide its undergraduate ASL interpreting tracks and courses. USU will also continue in its Masters in speech-language pathology and audiology.

In an open letter from Al Smith, the Dean of Education of College and Human Services, he said the main reasons for closing this Bi-Bi program is a small number of student graduates annually (about 5 per year), the program’s “lapse” in accreditation, and that an internal review found the program to not be high quality.

The accreditation that the program has is with the Council on the Education of the Deaf (CED). The CED issued a response to the USU closure on its website. They said the USU “erroneously attributed the suspension… to the CED.” The CED said it has not yet completed its process on a recommendation on re-accreditation of the program. CED also said they never recommended that USU suspend the program.

There is a group of people that is leading a petition and pushing the dean to reconsider the decision. They want him to keep the program running, but with an agreement that the program needs to be restructured.

We included the petition in this link that you can look at. We connected with Savannah Sparks, one of the activists in this situation. Savannah explained to us that she was supposed to enroll this fall, but she got a letter from USU saying that the program has closed and she has to consider another major. Here is the letter.

05 Full-Screen Image (USU Letter) with a pull quote that says, "...the Department is phasing out the Bilingual-Bicultural Program... This means that you need to change your major..."

Savannah said that everyone was really blind-sided. No one was warned or there were no signs given. She said that she feels like this was planned. Savannah explained that Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind (USDB) gets most of their teachers from the Bi-Bi program. The program produces teachers for Deaf children. So this is like a pipeline cut-off. USDB did send a letter as well.

(Screenshot of a Facebook Post from Michelle Tanner, Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind Superintendent with an excerpt that says, “ I can attest that the graduates from the (program) are some of the strongest educators of the deaf..."

The Utah Association of the Deaf also has sent in theirs.

[Excerpt of a video of an open letter showing Kim Smith, UAD President saying, “We don’t agree nor support the USU’s decision to close the program.” ]

[Sponsored Video from Convo: https://www.convorelay.com/download ]

We reached out to Al Smith, the dean, for his response. He referred us to Karen Muñoz who is a professor and department head for the Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education.

Muñoz said the small enrollment did not have an impact on this decision, pointing to what she said were larger issues with the program’s administration and compliance. Muñoz also mentioned that the department is aware about the petition but have not seen it yet. We asked if they would consider re-opening the program if the program is reconstructed. This is their response.

[“We will be planning future offerings/programming that is centered on the needs of the Deaf community, specifically those who use ASL to communicate. I cannot predict what exact form of programming or recommendations will emerge from the process; but the process will involve stakeholder input and the goal of the process is for the program to be in a stronger position to meet community needs than we have previously.” - Karen Muñoz]

There were several local news articles published about this situation. Savannah said she and her team want to make noise about this to help push the dean to reconsider. There are currently 3 deaf teachers in that program.

Emma Cole, another activist opposed to the program’s closure, says that “It is rough to see something that I care about so much about get taken away.” Savannah mentioned that they need more people from the Deaf community to get involved.

Links:

Petition Link:

https://www.change.org/p/utah-state-university-save-bilingual-bicultural-deaf-education

UAD (Utah Association of the Deaf) Open Letter to USU (Video and Transcript) https://fb.watch/b7AAW3Xo6u/

ABC 4 News Article:

https://www.abc4.com/news/digital-exclusives/if-we-cut-it-off-the-community-dies-usu-suspends-utahs-only-asl-education-program-indefinitely-devastating-students-deaf-community/?fbclid=IwAR0dgulMNANj71Mz-1MkMLJg19QW2mgKBpSAPV78c2X9fmrBnHwZ8ewCX4w

KSL News Interview & Article:

https://www.ksl.com/article/50345354/utahs-only-masters-program-for-american-sign-language-eliminated?fbclid=IwAR1sjjz87sc1FzoDruwyI0i4z2BnAMzW9MeiheOgXx2qSN2GaunC7nhJmME

USU Statesman: (College Newspaper)

https://usustatesman.com/suspension-of-deaf-education-program-leaves-members-of-the-deaf-community-upset/?fbclid=IwAR1jq_gBPTX2KEjCnvS92oyB_Ej869Xce1WkFxzqBk0B-LMnftK7rLslbq8

Fox 13 TV Interview: (no captions available)

https://www.facebook.com/100036081126094/videos/679541866385506/