Photo provided. University of Illinois students Anisha Jog and Sumayyah Hussain stand by their presentation on the ASL STEM Vocabulary App, a game-based learning platform their team created to remove barriers that deaf and hard-of hearing students have when learning STEM-based vocabulary.
Students launch ASL STEM Vocabulary App Company
July 20, 2023
Engineering, scientific research, and innovation constantly create a dizzying array of technical terms. Keeping up with this expanding terminology presents unique challenges to deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) students who communicate using American Sign Language (ASL.) For example, Daniel Lundberg, a deaf chemistry professor at Gallaudet University, estimates that about 80% of chemistry terms have no established sign. This is an incredibly frustrating situation for students in middle school, where most students decide to pursue an interest in STEM.
In the summer of 2020, Mona Noor Jawad, then an undergraduate bioengineering student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, volunteered at the Grainger College of Engineering Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering summer camp. The camp is designed to provide pre-college STEM opportunities to underrepresented groups. She observed that “it was a great organization full of diverse students, but I was surprised by the lack of DHH representation among our applicants. Working with the same educator who ran the camp, I interviewed deaf educators about the challenges they faced in teaching STEM. For these students, I was told it all begins with their vocabulary.”
Innovation, Inspiration on display at the Undergraduate Research Symposium
June 1, 2023
Walking into the Illini Union ground floor conference rooms during the Undergraduate Research Symposium is a dizzying and inspiring experience It’s a smorgasbord of inquiry and experimentation across academic programs and departments covering everything from autism in rats to NFL contracts. And more.
Undergraduate Research Week took place April 23-29, 2023, and culminated Thursday, April 27, 2023, in its signature event: the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Since 2008, undergraduates from across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have presented their work in concurrent oral and poster presentations. The number of participants has grown, with over 800 gathered this year. The breadth and scope of their research speak to the caliber of
Illinois undergraduates, the mentoring they receive from faculty, and the university’s commitment to supporting and expanding research opportunities on campus, in the community, and beyond.
Our vision for Illinois as a land-grant institution is to foster accessible, effective STEM teaching and learning—from preschool through graduate education—at local, state, and national levels, thereby preparing a highly able citizenry and diverse STEM workforce to tackle pressing global challenges.
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