The Bachelor of Arts degree in Communicative Disorders provides the students with a liberal arts foundation integrated with courses designed to provide a basic understanding of speech, language, and hearing development and communicative problems. Students pursuing deaf studies have two options: deaf education and interpreting. Students majoring in deaf education and speech-language pathology can continue their options in our graduate program. Sign Language Interpreting is a career that connects one community to another. In order to accomplish this, interpreters must relay the messages being presented to the highest degree of accuracy possible. This includes relaying tones of voice, feelings and attitudes. The only way that this is possible is to be fluent in both languages and be able to move between languages with ease.

The first step towards becoming a Sign Language Interpreter is to become fluent in a Sign Language, most commonly used in the United States, American Sign Language. Since the profession serves a variety of communication needs, interpreters must be versatile, objective, and reliable. To be a certified Sign Language Interpreter, on must be awarded the National Interpreter Certification (NIC) that is a test overseen by two organizations, the Registry of interpreters for the deaf (RID) and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). Certified interpreters are in very high demand and the pay varies greatly because of that high demand. Interpreters can work for an organization or work freelance.