By C. Mae Waugh

Last year, 60,000 hours of communication were lost in translation, somewhere between a speaking person’s mouth and a Deaf person’s eyes. This gap exists because there are not enough interpreters, said Mollie Deckert, a freshman American Sign Language (ASL) major who said she learned this statistic in one of her classes.

Now Northeastern, which was granted $4.5 million and named the National Interpreter Education Center (NIEC) by the Department of Education on Oct. 25, is working to change that by devoting more resources to the issue and training more students to be interpreters.

“The demand for interpreters is phenomenal,” said Dennis Cokely, director of the ASL program, “which is great in terms of careers, but not such a great thing for Deaf people.”

For the past 20 years, Northeastern’s American Sign Language Department has received grants from the Department of Education to provide service training for working interpreters and enable workshop training sessions for new interpreters.

The grants ran in five-year cycles and were distributed to 10 regional centers and two national centers.

This year, the terms of the grants changed, cutting down the number of regional centers from 10 to five, and the number of larger, national centers from two to one. Northeastern earned the regional and national grants, an honor, Cokely said, that is a testament to the effectiveness of Cathy Cogen, Northeastern’s regional director for the last decade.

“The stiff competition makes the grants all the more significant,” Cokely said.

Northeastern will serve as the main point of coordination and collaboration for the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers (NCIEC).

Under the directorship of Cogen, the regional grant of $1.5 million will go toward fostering effective practices in educational programs throughout the region and working to increase the number of students throughout professional development, mentorship, graduate certificate programs and feeder programs.

Around the country right now there are 135 ASL programs, 110 of which are at two-year institutions. Northeastern will now work with those programs and identify strategies to create new programs in four-year universities.

Northeastern will also organize an annual summer institute for interpreters and educators. The event, which will be held at Northeastern sometime this summer, will include tracks for current and potential educators, working interpreters and interpreting students.

Grant money will go toward the funding of the project and making the cost affordable for students and interpreters.

Cokely predicts the grants will help the university become a powerhouse of ASL and interpreter education.

“We’ve had a prominent position in New England for awhile,” he said. “We’ve held a leadership position for folks elsewhere in the country and now it will continue.”

Northeastern, Cokely said, is acclaimed to have one of the top programs in the country for ASL, a designation that freshman Jessica Barry said influenced her decision to come to Northeastern.

“I automatically decided to come here because I heard it was one of the best places for ASL,” she said.

Currently, Northeastern has 70 ASL interpreting majors and ASL studies dual-majors. Cokely said ASL is the second most popular language taken by Northeastern students, behind Spanish. The department consists of director Cokely, four full-time Deaf faculty members, two full-time associate professors and a number of adjunct faculty teaching interpreting courses.

Karen Joy, a senior ASL major and president of the Interpreting Club, said she loves the ASL program and is happy to watch it expand.

“It’s like my family away from home. It has welcomed me and encouraged me to make it and [Cokely] is like a second father figure to us,” she said.

With the grants and the improved programming, Cokely said he expects an increase in ASL majors. Deckert sees this as a good thing.

“More students will help the community,” Deckert said.

The ultimate goal of the next five years, Cokely said, is to improve the quality of interpreting education nationwide, increase the number of interpreters and begin programs that can sustain themselves and continue to add to quality programs after the grant money runs out.